


A persona user without a party or: A snake can change it's skin but not it's colors

by MindFox



Category: Persona Series
Genre: Mystery, Urban Fantasy, Urban Legends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 38,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25209403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MindFox/pseuds/MindFox
Summary: After a strange night with an urban legend and TV's that swallow people, Rita finds herself with a power beyond most humans. How will a lone Persona user deal when on her own?





	1. Case 0 part 1

It wasn’t often that I thought about urban legends. In fact, I would say that until today I had never really paid attention to them. They were a waste of time in my opinion, and I didn’t get why people liked them so much.

People like the two airheads sitting in front of me who were chatting away before class like always. I groaned as I barely kept up with their rapid pace.

“So did you hear about…?”

“Oh, you mean the TV thing?”

“Yeah, I tried it and it didn’t work,”

“Whoa, so did you see anything?”

“Not a thing,”

“Why do you sound so disappointed. I never knew you were into that kind of occult stuff,”

I grumbled as I tried to concentrate on the book that I was reading. It was getting to a good part and I wanted to at least try to finish the chapter by the time class started.

“What can I say, I’m a romantic,”

“How is knowing how you’re going to die romantic?”

“What are you talking about? You’re supposed to see…”

I tuned them out as I guessed how the conversation was going to go from there. It felt like that particular urban legend was everywhere these days. Normally I would just ignore it like all the rest, but there was just something… weird about it.

Because there didn’t seem to be one urban legend that was going around town. Instead there were a ton of variations of the same urban legend going around town. That was inspite of how new it was. 

Oh, they all started the same. Turn on your TV at exactly 1:23 AM and then turn to channel 4. Not on your cable or satellite whatever, local stations only. Go up a channel while counting up to match the channel number until you reach channel 10. If you do it right, then whatever channel 10 normally is gets replaced with something different.

The variations were all basically what the ‘something different’ was. 

The first version I heard was that you would see your soul mate. The next was that it showed you your own death. From the little that I could hear from the airheads, those were the versions those two had heard. They were also the most common, at least among the people who I overhead talking about it.

But those weren’t the only ones. Aside from those, channel 10 could be a pirate radio show, a live broadcast of a man playing the violin in an empty room, a recording of an actual murder, and most terrifying of all a live feed of the room you were in at that very moment.

I tried not to think about that last one too hard.

Soon enough the teacher walked in and the two airheads quieted down. I put down my book and placed it back in my bag. As I zipped it shut, I realized that I hadn’t I never made it to the end of the chapter.

I spent the rest of the day coasting by, just kind of waiting for it to be over. It wasn’t hard, the thing with the airheads had been almost at the end of the day. So when the final bell rand just two hours later, I got out my chair and started walking to the front gates.

Is I made my way down the stairs of the school building, I already knew where I was going. Right in front of my house, there was a small, almost abandoned park. It was nestled in among the buildings, so I didn’t have to worry about the wind, which made it the perfect spot to finish reading my book.

I reached the bottom of the stairs with my destination decided when I was stopped by a certain someone.

“Oh hey Rita,” A familiar voice called out to me from down the hall. I looked up and almost found myself blinded by a shining sentinent smile that was walking towards me.

I pretended to hiss and cover my eyes as Robby approached, getting a laugh out of my old… would he be called a friend?

The only reason I knew him was because our moms had been best friends in college, and they had ended up living in the same apartment building after that. So whenever one of them was busy, they had sent us over to the other’s apartment to be watched. And if it wasn’t for that, I honestly think that Robby and I would never have talked to each other in our entire lives.

But I had ended up talking to him and that meant that I had to deal with this walking ball of sunshine.

“Hey Robby,” I said back as I ignored the weird looks a few people gave us. The two of us didn’t look the kind of pair you would expect. Robby was tall, blond, physically fit, and always wore bright colors and a smile. I was kind of short, pale with black hair, and I was pretty sure the politest term I had heard used about myself had been ‘gloomy’.

Not that I cared, hoodies and sweat pants were comfortable and there was no force on earth that was going to convince me give them up.

“So,” Robby said, bringing me out of my thoughts. “Have you heard about this new TV legend thing?”

I groaned as I put my hand over my face and massaged my temples.

“Oh not you too,” I grumbled before putting my hand down. “Okay so what version of the thing did you hear?”

“Version?” He asked sounding bewildered. I quickly explained what I had noticed about every version starting the same but then having different things at the end.

“Personally the worst one I’ve heard is that you turn the channel to 10 and it shows you in the room your standing in, like there’s someone in the room with you recording,” I told him as I noticed a shiver go down his spine.

“That’s creepy,” He said as he tried to play off the shiver my shuffling his shoulder. “No, I heard the version where it shows you the future,”

I tilted my head to the side as I searched my memory.

“Not sure I’ve heard that one before,” I said as I came up empty. Robby perked up as he heard me say those words. “How does this one go?”

“Well,” He started saying with way too much pride in his voice. “The version I heard was that if turned the channel to 10, you’ll see a news show that talks about what’s going to happen tomorrow,”

I took in what he said and weighed it against what I had already heard.

“Have to say,” I told him as I came to a decision. “My favorite version had been the pirate radio show, but I think I like that one more,”

“Yeah, but the guy who told me that one didn’t say what kind of stuff gets revealed about the future so who knows how useful it would be,” He said with a shrug before flinching back. “Or right I almost forgot,”

“Everything okay?” I asked as he waved my concern away.

“My mom called me earlier,” He started explaining. “She said to remind you that our parents are going to that college meetup thing,”

“What? I remembered that,” I lied as I realized that I would have to stop by the convenience store on the way home. No mom or dad to drive me out at the last minute when we realized that we had forgotten something for dinner. “They’re going to be gone all night and come back tomorrow morning right?”

“That’s right,” He said. “I wonder if they’ll still be there by the time we get home?”

“I’m pretty sure they are, the meetup is in a hotel downtown so it shouldn’t take them that long to get there,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but are either of us going straight home?” He counter pointed out before I looked over his shoulder. Behind Robby were a few of his boys. I wasn’t really sure what they all did after school, and I didn’t really care.

As for the other way around, Robby knew that I went somewhere after school to read and relax, but I was pretty sure he didn’t know where.

“That is true,” I told him as I gave him the win on this one. “Well I won’t keep you from your boys, go on and do… whatever it is that you do,” I said as I shooed him away.

“Got it,” He said holding back a laugh. He started walking back to his friends when he turned back around one last time. “Oh one last thing?”

“Sure what is it?” I told him as he came back. I watched his mouth as he said 9 words that were going to drive me crazy for the rest of the day.

“Are you planning on trying out the TV thing?” He asked as I just kind of shrugged my shoulders.

“Not really seems kind of dumb,” I told him, believing myself at the time.

He took me at my word before dashing away back to his boys.

Fun fact, Robby’s boys hated that I called them Robby’s boys. Learning this was all the reason I needed to keep calling them that forever.

I headed out of the school, catching the free local city bus to my usual stop. And by my usual stop, I meant the stop right in front of the convenience store three blocks away from my house.

I walked into the store and ignored the people talking until I heard one particular guy talk about what else but the TV legend. That thing was just everywhere, wasn’t it?

I grabbed the few things I needed, mostly a small container of mustard, a jar of peanuts, a small orange juice for me to drink at breakfast tomorrow, and a candy bar because why not.

As I walked out of the store with everything paid for and in a bag, I found myself looking between the bus stop and the direction of my house.

I hadn’t bought that much stuff, and three blocks weren’t that far to carry it. I could totally just walk the rest of the way instead of waiting for the bus.

No, I really could. Ignore the skinny noodle arms hidden under my hoody, I had the strength of a lion.

After what felt like hours I finally made to the park.

“Finally,” I said as I flopped down on the bench next to the entrance like the proud lion I was. I took deep breaths as I noticed the city bus pass by.

The city bus that passed by every half an hour…

I tried not to think about how I could have just waited for the bus and instead set the stuff I bought to the side and got my book out.

I sat back and relaxed as I got through the rest of the chapter as well as all of the next. It was a pretty good read, a fun fantasy story about a trio of werewolves going on a grand adventure to save their clan’s land from your typical dark lord. Eril, the main werewolf, had just found a mystical ‘lunar stone’ that allowed him to transform whenever he wanted. It was also maybe making him crazy so there was that.

I closed the book just as the chapter ended on Eril maybe about to hand the lunar stone to his love interest…

“Does it count as a love interest if they’re already dating before the story even starts?” I asked myself aloud as I looked at the book. I shrugged my shoulder and put the book away and made my way to the building.

As I walked up the stairs, Robby’s words started playing again in my head. About trying out the legend. I couldn’t lie to myself about this, I wanted to know. After hearing so many versions of the same story, I wanted to know which one it was.

I opened the door to silence. A lack of loud music or blaring TV filled the air of the apartment. My parents had already left for their meetup. I set my bag down on the couch and headed into the kitchen to start putting away the stuff I had bought at the store.

I closed the door of the fridge when I heard my phone ring. “Let’s see, Robby, Mom, Dad?” I asked myself as I unlocked my phone and saw that it was from choice number 1. Robby wanted to meet up tomorrow morning for pancakes.

I liked food, and Robby was a surprisingly good cook so I said yes without hesitation.

I spent the rest of the night in relative peace. I sat down to read some more and to my surprise, Eril didn’t hand over the stone. A worrying sign for sure  
I finished a few more chapters of the book before setting it down for a movie that I had been planning to watch for a while now. Halfway through I got up to heat up the food that my parents had left me to eat.

As I sat on the sofa, a plate of pasta in front of me and movie playing in front of me, I realized that I could really get used to this whole ‘living alone’ thing.

Of course like all things in life, the movie had to come to an end. I got up to clean the plate that had held the pasta when the next movie came on.

I raised my eyebrow. It was another one that I’d been planning on seeing for a while now. I set down the plate for a second and opened up the channel guide.

It looked like they were having a miny marathon of a bunch of movies that I had been planning to see. And it also looked like the marathon was ending at 1 in the morning…

Just 23 minutes before the show started.

I shook my head and took the plate to the sink before sitting back down on the couch.

I made it through the rest of the movies until 1 AM finally came.

“I guess this is it,” I mumbled as I watched clock start ticking towards 1:23. I made sure that the TV was on channel 3 before turning it off. I spent most of the remaining time trying to think of a way to pass the time. Of course, by the time I realized that I could have sneaked in an episode of one of my shows, it was time.

“Alright, let’s do this,” I told myself as I turned the TV on as the clock struck 1:23. My fingers clutched the buttons on the side of the TV, the kind I needed to switch between the local channels. I flipped the channel to four, counting up as I kept going.

“4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,” I said as I stepped back and watched the screen.

I knew my local channels. I knew what channel 10 would have at this time of night. Channel 10 would be playing infomercials.

What I was looking at was not an infomercial.

It looked like a live feed of a room I knew all too well.

Many years ago when I was little, my parents had taken me to my grandfather’s house. He was old and didn’t have much time left, so they decided that I needed to at least meet the man even if he and mom didn’t get along.

He was a bit creepy, I remembered that much. Always watching everyone with that big old eye of his. And looking back, he had a ton of occult and shifty stuff in his house. But none of that mattered.

Because my grandfather owned the biggest library I had ever seen.

The thing was so tall that it was on two floors, with its own staircase inside. The walls and shelves were filled to the brim with books of all kinds, collected over the course of a lifetime according to my grandfather. And in the very center of the room, there was a big open area with a compass painted on the floor. Above that was a working moving model of the solar system that hung overhead.

I had almost lived in that room during my stay at my grandfather’s house. Pouring over the books that he would pluck from the shelves and place in front of the table that I was sitting at. He was always great at guessing what kind of thing I would like to read too.

By the time we left, I was pretty sure I was heartbroken about having to leave that place behind.

And now here I was, standing in front of the TV looking at that very room. Specifically, the view from someone standing on the second-floor railing looking down at the compass floor.

“How, and why?” I asked myself before I noticed something moving around on the screen. My eyes darted to the edge of the screen as a figure walked out into the compass floor. She was a teenage girl with messy black hair, blue eyes, and a pointy nose, wearing black sweatpants and a gray hoodie with a big purple heart in the center. It was someone who I had seen before, every time I looked in the mirror.

It was me standing there in the center of the room.

“What am I doing there?” I asked as I leaned in towards the TV. My copy was just sort of standing still, looking ahead with an emotionless face. I watched them carefully as they slowly looked up right at the camera.

Right at me.

I gulped as the copy lifted their arm up and smiled while waving me over.

“Don’t know how you plan for me to do that,” I mumbled to myself as I brought my hand up to the TV screen. “You’re in there and I’m out here,”

I flicked the TV screen to make a point only for my fingers to get stuck inside. I covered my mouth before I could let out a scream. I hyperventilated as I tried to pull my fingers out, only for them to be stuck. I looked back at the screen, to my copy, but she was gone. Instead, the screen was filled with static. Static that was slowly crawling up my fingers and taking over my hand.

“Oh no,” I whispered as I started tugging my arm as hard as I could. My limb screamed as I felt like I was about to just rip the whole thing off. And the whole time, the static just kept going up past my hand and into my arm.

It was getting faster too. Every time I looked back, the static was further and further along. I looked down, it had already reached my neck. I closed my eyes as I swept up over my face.

I felt something pulling me forward, and then something else squeezing me like I was going through a tube, and then nothing.


	2. case 0 part 2

When I opened my eyes again, I was standing in my grandfather’s library. Or at least, a place that looks like it. Everything was mostly the same, except for the thin layer of fog covering everything in a yellowish hue.   
I glanced down, just to make sure that I still had both my arms. They were both there, so at least I have that going for me. 

I raised my hand to my face and twisted my fingers around just to make sure that everything was still working. Once that was done, I put my hand down to take in the library that I had just been… I guess teleported would be the right word. 

“And we are officially in fantasy town,” I muttered to myself as walked forward onto the compass. I mean, it was the only real explanation. “Not how I would have expected to fall into a fantasy story but okay…”  
“And you would know all about fantasy, right?” 

I turned around and saw my copy standing across from me. Or at least, mostly a copy. Her eyes were bright yellow for some reason. By coincidence, we had ended up on opposite ends of the compass star. I stood on the east point, while she stood on the west. 

“Let’s try another fantasy. The fantasy that I can ever make any friends,” My copy accused with a venom that I didn’t know my voice could do. 

“I mean, you’re not wrong,” I admitted sheepishly. “But do you have to be so mean about it?” 

“Why shouldn’t I be mean? It’s not like I’m talking to someone who’s worth talking to in the first place. Such a pathetic little thing. Secretly wanting friends but too scared to reach out to others. Too scared to do anything but put up your paper walls to keep the world out,” 

The copy started walking around the compass as she spoke. As she talked, I could see her smile getting bigger. 

“Because books are so much easier than people,” She continued. “Because it’s so much easier to call other people airheads when you really just want to talk to them yourself. Let’s face it, if it wasn’t for Robby, would you even talk to anyone at all?”

“You’re being really harsh about this,” I pointed out to the copy even as I felt all her words hit home. “Are you like, some sort of… not evil version, but a mean or cruel version of me?”

The copy of me smiled as she spread her arms out in a dramatic gesture. 

“I am a shadow, the true self,” She boasted. “I am all the little parts of yourself that you deny. The parts that you hide away from the world,”

“So you’re me then,” I told my shadow. “So what now, are you going to try to attack me, take my place?” I asked guarded as the shadow just smiled. 

“Well I guess that all depends,” The shadow said as she got right in my face. “Do you deny any of it? Do you deny being a friendless little girl who’s too scared of rejection to reach out to others?”

I took a deep breath and thought about it… I mean, as much as I wanted to admit it, my shadow self had a point. I did have a tendency to push other people away… 

“Maybe you have a point,” I grumbled. “I do kind of push people away. And talking to other people is scary…” 

The shadow backed off a bit as I gripped the bottom of my hoodie. 

“Honestly, I don’t know how to fix my problems. I don’t know how to talk to other people, but pretending that I just don’t want to talk to them at all is just lying to myself,”

The shadow’s face was mostly emotionless as she slowly nodded her head.

“You are me, all the parts that I wanted to pretend that didn’t exist,” I told my shadow who began to fade. 

A circle of blue light appeared around her feet, pushing away the fog and filling the library. My shadow began to float in the air as I heard a mysterious echoing voice in my head. 

“You have gained the strength of heart to face yourself,” I heard it say as my shadow vanished and was replaced with a new figure. “You have gained the façade to overcome life’s hardships, the Persona Lamia,”

I wasn’t sure how to feel about what was in front of me. My shadow had been replaced with something new. She still looked like me from the waist up… but from the waist down she had the body of a snake. Yellow scales covered her belly while the top was colored with alternating bands of red and black. 

She also wasn’t wearing a hoodie anymore. Instead she was wearing a short sleeved black crop top just tight enough for anyone who saw it to know how little there was under it. On her upper arm she wore a silver bracelet designed like a snake. Her face was still the same as mine, expect for the inclusion of long elf ears and fanged teeth. 

Lamia faded away as a shining blue card fell from the sky. I grabbed the card as it came down to me. On the card’s back was a blue background with lines of black diamonds running from top to bottom. I turned it around and saw an image of a bearded old man standing at the edge of a cliff. In one hand he had what could have either have been a walking stick or staff. In the other he held up a lit lantern, the only source of light in the image.  
Printed on the bottom were the Roman numerals for 9 and the words ‘The Hermit’. 

I looked at the card as it faded away. But somehow I could still feel it in my hand… like all I had to do was reach out and it would be in my hand again.

I grasped for the card and it appeared in my hand again. I waited a few seconds and watched it fade again. 

“Neat… but what does it do?” I asked the mysterious voice that I had heard before. I glanced around the room, waiting for an answer. “And how do I get out of here?” 

Only silence answered me back. Looked like the mysterious voice wasn’t going to be too helpful. I was going to have to figure this out on my own. 

My first guess was that I could get out if I walked out of the library. I walked over to the first door and tried it. I let out a frustrated huff when it turned out to be locked.

I turned around to head up the stairs and try the second floor door when I felt the room shake. I glanced at the center of the room and watched as a crack appeared in the compass. 

I grabbed the door knob to balance myself as the crack widened. By the time the shaking stopped, the crack had grown wide. I steadied myself and got just a bit closer, just enough to see inside. 

Inside the crack was the same fog that had filled the library. But instead of the light fog that hadn’t done much to block visibility, the fog in the crack was thick. I couldn’t see anything past it, except for a yellow light that was coming from something below it.

“…So am I supposed to jump in or what?” I asked the room hoping for the mysterious voice to say something just one more time. And just like the last time, I didn’t hear a thing. Well not quite, I thought I heard something. A low rumbling and the whooshing of air coming from the crack. I glanced down again and saw a dark smudge. A dark smudge that was getting a little bigger.

A dark smudge that was probably something that was coming this way. 

I jumped back as a monster erupted from the gap. A long green snake body rushed out of the crack as it started curling around the plants above my head. The end of the body came out of the gap leaving the whole thing in the air above me. As soon as it had cleared the gap, the floor grew back into place, leaving it like new. 

It had a long green and gold body that coiled around the model planets. It didn’t have a real head, instead it has what looked like a weird trident with its three golden prongs in a triangle formation. In the center of the formation was a white gem. 

“Hi?” I said, hoping that it was friendly. 

Instead of saying anything, the gem on the snake monster’s face started to glow and crackle with electricity. 

I had played enough games to know where this was going. I ran off behind a book shelf as the snake unleased a ray of electricity on where I had been standing. 

“Cranky aren’t you?” I asked as I peeked my head out and tried to ignore the scorch marks where I had been standing before. The snake didn’t say anything, just gathering electricity again and switching over to aim at the bookcase. I waited for it to charge a little more before talking off running. I could hear the crackle as the lightning ripped past the books which I really hoped were fake.

I made it past another bookcase when I saw the staircase. I was about to rush up the stairs when a stray thought crossed my mind. The way the snake was placed, all it needed to do was lift its head to have a clear shot of the door. 

A door that I knew from memory had no book cases near it. If I tired the door and it was locked I would be a sitting duck. I either had to find another way or deal with the snake first…

“Use my power,”

I blinked as I heard a second mysterious echoy voice in my head. And unlike the genderless, neutral, ageless voice of the first one, this one sounded almost like mine. 

“Reach out to my power and make it yours,”

I blinked as I felt information filling my head. Not a great flood of understanding, but enough of a vague understanding to do what I needed to do. 

I ran out from the bookcase at the sound of lightning. I stood in the open on front of the snake as I reached out for the card and it appeared in my hand.

“Persona,” I cried out as I crushed the card and blue energy erupted from my feet.

I didn’t need to look back to know that Lamia was floating right behind me. I could feel her, she was me, and I was her. 

I reached down and let loose what I had inside me.

“Burn!” I yelled as Lamia formed a small fireball that I somehow knew was called an Agi in her hand. She threw it as hard as she could at the snake, the flame flying through the air and detonating on the snake’s skin. It flinched back before readjusting its head back at me. 

Lamia faded away as I ran forward as the snake shot lightning back at me. The lightning faded as I looked back up at the snake and called forth the card again.

“Come, Lamia,” I said as she appeared again. Fire had done a pretty good job… but what else did I have? A strange word filled my head after I asked the question. 

Rakunda.

Lamia waved her hand in front of her as a blue aura surrounded the snake. As soon as she did, it started looking less solid. I understood that Rakunda was a sort of curse that lowered defense, but I wasn’t expecting it to look like that.

“Well, might as well take advantage. Come Lamia,” I said as she came forth and fired another Agi at the snake. 

The flame burned the green snake, the monster letting out a screech. I wasn’t sure how I felt about finally getting some sort of sound of the thing, but it meant that it was working. 

There was a long burn running down the side of the snake where I had hit it with Agi. It shook in place before it started dropping. 

I ran out from under the snake as it fell down to the ground. I jumped just as it hit the floor, making the room shake again. I landed on my feet and turned around to see the snake slowly turning its jewel head at me again.   
“If you will accept them, I can lend you my fangs,” I heard Lamia say again as some more information filled my head. I flexed my hands as twin daggers appeared in them. With the snake still slow, I rushed forward and plunged both daggers into the snake’s skin.

I stood there knowing for sure that was the dramatic finish that had just ended the fight. 

Or at least I did before hearing a certain crackling again. I slowly lifted my head up and saw the snake looking down right at me, its gem almost fully charged. 

“…Oh,” I said softly before pulling the daggers out of the snake and putting my arms up in anticipation for a world of pain followed by death.

Lightning flashed and I learned that I had been half right. 

I screamed as I felt the lightning course through my body. The white hot energy shaking my body.

I was still screaming when the lightning ended and I nearly collapsed to the ground. I just barely caught myself as I landed on my hands and feet.

Everything hurt, everything burned. Even trying to move sent a wave of pain through the offending limb. My head felt like it was splitting apart and I could hear my heartbeat racing in my ears.

I could hear my heartbeat.

I was still alive.

I could still get out of this. 

I looked up at the snake, its gem dead for now. I knew it wouldn’t stay that way though. I had to get up. I tried to move my limbs only to feel another surge of pain. It was no good. But I had to move. The snake’s gem was starting to glow again. I was running out of time…

“Persona,” I said as I crushed the card that appeared in my hand. Lamia appeared above me just as I heard the lightning again. She dashed down and picked me up just as the snake fired its lightning. 

I felt like screaming for so many reasons. Being bridal carried like this made me want to scream in pain. The rush of moving through the air like this made me want to scream in excitement. The sensation of escaping danger with my own plan made me want to scream in triumph. 

I wasn’t sure which of the screams I let out as Lamia carried me up to the second floor. Maybe it was all three?

Either way, when Lamia set me down on the second floor, I landed on my feet, the pain already fading somehow. When I glanced down and inspected myself, I somehow looked the same. No burnt skin hair or clothing…

“Did the Persona make me stronger?” I wondered before I heard the snake start to move through the air again. It still looked wrong, out of synch with reality. Rakunda was still going. Lamia followed my will as she sent another Agi at the snake. 

It wretched in pain but stayed airborn this time. It was also starting to look normal again. Looks like that curse of mine had run its course. 

I thought about using it again when I hesitated. It had been faint at first, but after that last Agi I was sure of it. Every time I called forth Lamia… no every time I used Lamia’s magic, I was using up something inside me. Something that could run out. 

I had to think of some other way to hit this thing that wouldn’t use up that thing inside me… 

I felt just bit more information fill my head. The knowledge of one more attack that I somehow knew represented the extent of my powers.

“Sick em Lamia,” I said as Lamia came forward and rushed right at the snake, her nails glowing purple and leaving streaks of light as she went through the air. She pulled back her hand and then rushed it forward, stabbing her nails into the monster’s flesh.

Blight fang, I somehow just knew that that the attack itself was pretty light. But it didn’t matter.

Because while blight fang might not have done that much damage, I could feel that I hadn’t used up the stuff that I used for my magic. Instead I somehow felt a bit more physically tired. Not ideal, but worth it considering the second effect. 

Lamia reached her arm back, leaving a glowing purple wound. A second later the snake started shaking as it started glowing with a purple aura as well. Poison, right from Lamia’s own nails.

The snake moved its head, the purple aura intensifying as it did so. This time when the snake started charging its gem, its whole body pulsed purple. I ran out the way and took cover behind one of the second floor bookcases. 

Here I was, in a magical version of my grandfather’s library, using magic powers to have a fantasy rpg battle with a giant flying lightning snake…

And I was about to lame it out via status effects. 

The lightning fired, burning down my hiding place and making me run to a new one. While between bookcases, I glanced over to the snake.

Its head was drooping, and the purple glow was looking real bright now. If I didn’t know any better I would say that it was on its last… okay not legs but point was the same.

“Might as well speed this up,” I said as I reached the end of the bookcase and crushed the card that appeared in my hand. “Come Lamia,” 

Lamia appeared to let off another Agi at the snake. And while I could feel it drain the power that I had in me, I was sure that the snake felt far worse. 

It turned at me again and started changing up its gem again…

Only for it to pulse purple again and lock up. The gem stooped glowing as the snake came crushing down to the ground. I ran ahead to the railing and watched as the snake began to blacken and then dissolve into ash.   
“I did it,” I mumbled to myself as the floor compass began to glow. I watched as light grew out of it and turned into a bright circle. Could that be…? 

I rushed down the stairs and jumped into the white circle. As soon as my feet touched the ground, the world around me shifted. 

I blinked and I was in my living room again. 

“Okay so was that a dream or…” I said as I tried to call forth Lamia again. I looked down at my hand, expecting to find it empty.

The card was there.

The card was there, but I couldn’t feel any power coming from it. Like it was a machine that had been discontented from its power source. I dismissed the card as I started mumbling.

“I got magic. But I almost died. But I got magic. But I almost died. But I got magic,” My brain went back and forth like the two halves of my brain were playing ping pong. 

I wasn’t sure how long I stood there repeating the same two phrases. What I was sure was what stopped me. I glanced up at the clock and read the time. 

“Wow it’s late…” I said as the two thoughts kept going in my head. I wasn’t going to be able to come to a decision about this, so I decided to call it for the night. 

And by call it, I meant pass out in bed and worry about it in the morning.


	3. case 0 part 3

Laying down in bed on a Sunday night shouldn’t have felt like a strange experience. It was the last night of the weekend before I had to head back to school, I knew what it should have felt like. A familiar mix of melancholy and vague sense of disappointment. 

Instead I was busy about the sudden genre shift my life had done over the last few days. 

I called the card again, not to summon Lamia, but to just sort of look at it. I raised it up, holding it above my face as I moved it around in my hand. 

I still couldn’t get over how nice it looked. It was made from thick and stable cardboard and laminated with a nice gloss… at least until I tried to crush it. As soon as I did that, the card crumpled like paper.   
A good thing too or summoning Lamia would have been much harder. 

Speaking off, the morning after the incident I had learned that I could indeed summon Lamia in the… I would say real work but I didn’t want to think about what that implied about the library. 

The point was that when I summoned Lamia in my room, she came. She couldn’t use her… my magic, but it was still enough proof that what had happened was real. Not that I would probably want to use her magic in my room even if I could. 

So far I could make a fireball, make a curse that made stuff more breakable, and could stab things to poison them. In short, nothing that I would want to test out even if I could. 

What I could do, was get a better look at my Persona. In the light of my room, I could see that Lamia’s human parts were not as much of a mirror copy of me as I thought. Her eyes were narrower and her skin was a few shades darker. Nothing that you would notice in the heat of the moment, but enough to tell us apart if the elf ears, wardrobe, and snake parts weren’t enough. 

Speaking of, I had spent a small chunk of my Saturday looking up everything I could about Lamia and the results had been… worrying. 

I mean… I may not like kids but eating them is a bit of a step up from that. At least it had helped finalize my decision to never have kids.

If magic was real then there was no way I was even going to risk tempting fate and learning that the Greek Gods were real too. The last thing I need is Hera showing up and giving me snake parts to match the original Lamia.  
I dismissed the card and turned on my side, looking at my chair as other thoughts came to mind. My parents had been nice enough to get me a little gift on their way back from their meet up. Laid down on the chair was a dark red hoodie. 

I wasn’t too sure what to think of it. On one hand, it was nice that they were buying me the only type of shirt that I usually wore… but it was such a bright color. There was nothing like it in my closest. 

Nothing at all. 

I got out of bed and opened my closet door and really took in what I was seeing. On the rack was what felt like an endless stream of gray, dark gray, and black hoodies… 

“Why shouldn’t I be mean? It’s not like I’m talking to someone worth talking to in the first place. Such a pathetic little thing. Secretly wanting friends but too scared to reach out to others. Too scared to do anything but put up your paper walls to keep the world out,” 

Rude choice of words aside, my shadow had had a point. I did have a tendency to put up walls to keep others out. My books did a lot of that but did my clothes do the same? 

I glanced back at the red hoodie on the chair. It wasn’t that different from my normal wear, not really. But it was a warmer color, and it was better than nothing. 

“Baby steps,” I told myself as I patted the hoodie before going back to bed. 

Besides, I could shoot fire now. Pretty sure I was contractually obligated by the universe to at least wear at least a little red. 

The next day I stood in front of the mirror and took in my new look. I had been right when I had thought that it wouldn’t be much of a change, but it had been a change nonetheless. Still, there was something about this red hoodie with these black pants that felt… both right and kind of familiar.

I scrambled my brain for a bit before it hit me. 

I called the card forth again and crushed it as Lamia appeared in my room. I walked up to my other self and compared the colors of my clothes with the rings that went down her tail.   
“We match,” I said with an amused huff. 

I dismissed her before my parents could walk in and see me with the big snake girl that almost looked just like me. 

I walked out of my room and headed to the breakfast table as my dad set two fried eggs down on my plate. 

“Morning,” I told them as I took a seat and got to eating. It honestly wasn’t as good as the pancakes that Robby had made Saturday morning, but they were good enough.

And all it cost me was the guilt I had felt when I lied to his face about trying on the TV legend. In my defense Robby didn’t look that broken up about it, probably because he had admitted to falling asleep before 1:23 anyway.   
“Hey, isn’t that a good look for you,” My dad said as he sat down next to me. 

“We were so worried that you weren’t going to wear it,” Mom admitted as she beamed at me. I shrugged my shoulders and tried my best to pretend that my change in wardrobe hadn’t come from a life-altering event where I had gotten magic powers. 

“Oh, you know… just felt like a red hoodie kind of day,” I told her as mom reached out to touch my shoulder. 

“And such a nice color too. See isn’t this better then what you normally wear?” She said as I felt a vein pop in my head. 

“Keep making a big deal about it and I’m going right back to wearing nothing but black and gray,” I told her as Mom pulled her fingers back like my hoodie was hot enough to burn them. 

“Let the girl be Carol,” My Dad said with a chuckle. “You know how much you hated it when your mom kept badging you about your clothes. I would know, I was there,” He barked with laughter after that part. 

“Oh yes, the awkward boyfriend sitting in the living room listening in on his girlfriend getting into a screaming match with her mother,” My mother said before letting out a nostalgic sigh.

I just rolled my eyes. I had already heard the story of my parent’s first date enough times to quote it word for word. Especially the part where my mom got into a screaming match with grandma and then swore to ‘never do this to my own child when she brings a boy home’.

Now that I thought about it, why exactly did mom always emphasize that part? Oh well, it probably didn’t matter. 

I finished breakfast and said my goodbyes before walking out the door. As I did, I noticed how weird it felt wearing a bright color out of the house for the first time in a while. I was so used to the bottom of my sight being something dark that the red was super noticeable. 

The trip to school was peaceful… and by peaceful I meant that I waited for the city bus for five minutes and then spent the rest of the trip reading. Partly because I wanted something to distract myself from how weird it was to walk into school with magic powers at my beck and call.

Also it was a really good book. 

New outlook on life or not, I still needed to know what would happen with these three werewolves. 

By the time I got off the bus, the number of werewolves had gone down to two and I was feeling dead inside. 

“Why… why would I read that right before school?” I asked myself as I stared at the school gates. In my head, the same scene played in my head over and over again. Eril standing over his best friend’s corpse with madness in his eyes as his love interest Jesini watched on in horror.

And the chapter ended with the strangest moment. Eril stands at the edge of a cliff and then just jumps off. And after getting to the bottom he ends up joining the bad guys.

How exactly was the story even going to go from here? Was Jesini the new main character? How were they going to wrap this all up in the two chapters they had left?

Well if I wanted to distract myself from the magic thing, I had managed it. Now my brain was filled with thoughts of insane werewolves and broken hearted girls who now officially deserved better.

By the time I saw Robby later that day. I was still feeling it. 

He took one glance at me and leaned back on the wall and waited for me to walk up to him. 

“One of your fictional characters die?” He asked despite knowing the answer. I gave him a quick explanation before leaning on the wall next to him. 

“So basically that’s what happened,” I told him. “Probably going to spend all of lunch reading it to the end,”

“Okay then… so what’s with the red?” He asked as I glanced down and fully took in the giant amount of red filling my vision.

“I don’t know,” I lied with a shoulder shrug. “My parents bought it for me on the way back from the thing and I figured I would wear it,” 

“Huh,” He said as he got back to his feet. “Okay then. I’ll leave you to your book,” 

“Thanks,” I told him “Talk to you later,” 

He started walking away when he suddenly stopped and looked back at me. 

“Oh right, almost forgot,” He said sheepishly. 

“You’ve been doing that a lot recently,” I pointed out, getting a weak chuckle out of him.

“Well you’re not wrong,” He said before putting on a serious face. “Did you hear about all the people that went missing last weekend?” 

I blinked and looked at him carefully. He didn’t look like he was kidding and Robby wasn’t the kind of person to joke about that kind of thing in the first place.  
“No, no I haven’t,” I admitted as he grimaced. 

“Yeah a lot of people just kind of up and vanished. The news has been freaking out about since this morning,” He explained as I understood why I hadn’t heard anything about it. My parents tended to only watch the evening news and I don’t pay attention to that kind of stuff at all. “Just be careful out there,”

“Don’t worry, I’m not about to disappear anytime soon,” I told him as I tried not to think about what could have happened to me if that snake had managed to beat me. 

We split off from there and soon enough I was in one of the quieter parts of the school courtyard with my book in hand. I opened it up to where I had left my bookmark when I heard someone walk up to me. 

I glanced up at the approaching boy and raised an eyebrow at him. He was skinny, about my height with flat black hair that covered one of his eyes. He was wearing a graphic tee of something that may or may not have been a band and a pair of blue jeans.

“Can I help you?” I said before wincing on the inside. Just got done telling my shadow that I had a problem with talking to people and I’m already botching my first conversation with someone besides my parents and Robby.  
“Mind if I ask if that book’s any good?” He asked, not looking too put off by how rude I had just been. “I like to read a lot and an aunt of mine just recommended it to me,”

I glanced down at the book in my hands and let out a small sigh of relief. At least the topic of conversation was something that I could deal with. 

That being said…

“Honestly, if you had asked me yesterday I would have said yes, but now…”

“Bad ending?” He asked with a wince as I shook my head. 

“Less bad ending and more unexpected events two chapters right before the ending,” I explained. “I guess I just don’t know where it’s going to go from here,” 

“You think you’ll be done with it soon?” He asked. 

“Yeah I think I will,” I told him as I sat back a bit. “I always read around here for lunch so feel free to stop by tomorrow for my recommendation,”

“Thanks, um… my name’s Zach,”

“Sure thing, mine’s Rita,” I told him before he went off on his way. 

I glanced down at the book again and saw just how close I was to the end. I would have to find a new book to take its place after this. 

Maybe I could spend the time looking into the stuff about my Persona and whatever happened on Friday…

Nah, what were the odds of running into something like that again anyway?

Case 0 end


	4. case 1 part 1

I sat down and just looked at the book in my hand. Just like I had predicted, Jeseni was the new main character and Eril was now officially on the bad guy’s side. Or at least I was pretty sure that it was the bad side. We kept getting chapters from his POV so I had no idea what to think at this point.

“I still can’t believe this,” I heard Zach mutter from next to me. I had ended up recommending the book to him, especially once I learned that the sequel was already out. What I hadn’t expected was for him to start joining me at lunch.

“Don’t believe what?” I asked as I set my book down. I had just reached a good stopping point anyway.

We didn’t do much, just read and have the occasional chat. Like the kind that we were having right now.

“I’m reading a YA book, the genre of bad teen romance… and the main character starts in a committed relationship. A committed relationship with someone’s who is basically his fiancé in an arranged marriage,”

“Yeah that threw me for a loop the first time I read it too,” I admitted to him. “You get used to it though,”

“I guess I will,” He said before flipping back a page and smiling. “Now Rowie? I like Rowie. I’m a sucker for his entire nice dudebro best friend archetype,”

I blinked as the scene of Eril standing over Rowie’s dead body while Jeseni looks on in shook played in my head again.

“Yeah he’s cool,” I said as neutrally as I could.

Fortunately, Zach was spared from any accidental spoilers from me as the bell rang.

“And there’s lunch,” He said as he glanced over at the bell. “Same thing come Monday?” He asked as he got up.

“Sure,” I told him as I put my book away and got up too. “See you then,”

We walked away from each other, heading to each of our classes to finish out the day.

Were we friends? I was pretty sure that we were friends…

Maybe I could ask Robby about it after school. Yeah that sounded like a good plan.

I found him easily enough once school ended. He was standing around the entrance, probably waiting for his boys to show up.

“Hey Robby quick question, I need the expertise of someone with a lot of friends,” I said as I walked up to him.

“Sure, what is it?” He asked as he turned towards me.

“What is it called if you see someone every day at lunch to just kind of hang out, read books, and then chat about books?” I asked as I could see the sun slowly rise over on Robby’s face.

“You made a friend,” He said in an awed whisper as he got closer. I blinked twice as he pulled me into a hug and kept whispering. “I am so proud of you,”

“I can’t tell what’s worse, the fact that I know you’re not being sarcastic, or the fact that I’m kind of proud of it too,” I told him as he let go and held me at arm’s length. Was there… oh my god there was an actual tear in his eye.

“Tell me everything,” He said as I looked past his shoulders. I could see his quickly approaching boys.

“Maybe later, here come your boys,” I said as Robby looked back and waved them over. Four pairs of eyes narrowed as I prepared myself for it.

“We’re not his boys!”

I smiled at the coordinated four person yell.

“There is no way that you guys don’t practice that and there’s no way that you’re convincing me otherwise,” I told them as they came to a stop in front of Robby.

Now normally this would be the part where I would name and describe each of the four boys… but there was just one little problem with that.

Robby had introduced us like two years ago and I had honestly forgotten all their names. I hadn’t done it on purpose or anything, but after calling them his boys that was the name that stuck in my head. And since I never really interacted with them… I didn’t really need to know their names.

Was it a good excuse… I wasn’t sure. But it was my excuse and I was standing by it.

“Oh hey guys,” Robby said as his boys came up to us. “Sorry I’m going to have to meet up with you guys later,”

“Why I thought we were doing that church thing today?” One of his boys asked as I raise an eyebrow. Robby wasn’t all that religious, neither were his parents.

“We were going to but now I have to have a little conversation with Rita here,” He said as he placed his hand on my shoulder and then used his other hand to point at me.

“I don’t mind if you’re boys,”

“Not his boys,”

“Know about this,” I told him as he backed away a bit. “What were you guys going to do anyway?”

“Oh well you see we heard this weird rumor and wanted to check it out,” He explained as I let out a sigh of relief.

“Oh that’s good, when I heard something about a church, I was a little worried that you were going to start burning my fantasy books,” I chuckled.

“Oh don’t worry about that. Basically there’s this rumor about the abandoned church on the outskirts of town,” He said as he lowered his voice in an attempt to sound spooky. “They say that in the middle of the courtyard is an old angel statue that turns around to look at you when you’re not watching,”

“Well that sounds like fun. We can talk about my thing later. You guys have fun with…”

I stopped as I thought of just what exactly happened the last time that Robby told me about some sort of urban legend.

“On second thought mind if I come with you guys?”

“Okay so now tell me all about it,” Robby asked as we walked with sandwiches in hand. We had stopped by a shop to buy some since we were probably going to miss dinner doing this.

“Not much to tell,” I said before biting my sandwich. It was a tuna sub with tomatoes and mayo, the same sandwich I always get when buying from shops. “Last week I was sitting in my usual place during lunch when someone walked up to me and asked me about the book I was reading,”

“Yeah that would make sense,” He said with a slight chuckle. “Still, it’s a bit different from what I would have expected. Normally you would… you know,”

“Told him to buzz off and let me get back to my reading?” I finished for him. “Yeah I know, I’m trying to fix that part of me,”

“Oh so it’s a he?” Robby said with a certain tone that I wasn’t sure I liked. I bit into my sandwich again and looked straight on. I couldn’t look at his face right now. I knew what was there, and I didn’t want to see it.

I strained myself to keep my eyes as forward as they could…

They glanced over and saw Robby’s wiggling eyebrows.

“Ugh, why do you have to do that?” I let out a frustrated growl. “You know I hate it,”

“Hate what?” He asked innocently as his eyebrows kept wiggling away. “So tell me more about this guy,”

“Fine, but stop,” I told him as the eyebrows ceased their movement. I let out a sigh and massaged my temples before continuing. “His name is Zach and he’s really into books like me. His Aunt recommended that he read ‘fangs over hearts’ and when he saw me reading it he asked me about it. I told him that I hadn’t finished it yet and to come back when I did,”

“So not only did you not shoo him away, you invited him back to your spot?” Robby asked in amazement.

“Like I said, I’m trying to not be that person anymore…” I paused before thinking it over a bit. “Well maybe it would be better to say that I’m trying to not be that particular version of that person anymore,”

“Weird way to say it but it makes sense,” He said as he notched his head to the side. “You’re still you, but like a nicer version of you,”

“Pretty much,” I shrugged. “So I finished the book, told him that I thought it was worth reading. He showed up the next day with his own copy and we’ve just kind of hung out reading together since,”

“Then I would say you’re friends then,” He told me with a wink.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that just yet,” I told him as I gulped. He frowned as he took a second glance at me. “You remember last week when I showed up to school dead?”

“Was it the same book that you recommended him?” Robby asked, hitting the bull’s-eye. I gave him a nod.

“Let’s see if he still wants to be friends with me after that,” I told him as I tried not to think too much about the worst possible scenario. “Probably should tell him to order the sequel now he just has it when he finishes the first one,”

“You’re going to have to follow your own judgment on that one,” He said before rubbing his chin. “Still, Zach… I don’t think I know a Zach,” He glanced up at his boys who were walking a little ahead of us. “Hey guys, any of you know a Zach?”

Three of the boys shook their heads as one of them looked back at us. He snapped his fingers at us with a grin.

“Yeah I know a Zach. You talking about the short dude with the hair that covers one of his eyes like a discount anime character?”

“He’s not that short,” I argued back. “He’s about as tall as I am, oh he is short isn’t he?”

“I’ll say that that’s a yes Kenny,” Robby said with a snicker. “What’s he like?”

“Oh he’s kind of quiet, doesn’t say much,” The newly, for me at least, named Kenny explained. “Crazy smart though. Got paired up with him for a project once. He did like 90% of the work for it and I got an A out of it… Feel kind of bad about it now that I think about it,”

“Well the two of us are usually in the small courtyard behind the new building during lunch,” I told him. “Feel free to stop and apologize if you feel that bad about it,”

“I might do that,” Kenny said before turning back around.

I watched his back for a second as my own question danced on my tongue, waiting for me to let it loose.

“So do you guys always do this on weekends? Walk around town and investigate mysteries?” I asked as Robby.

“The walking around town part is pretty normal for us,” He explained. “But the investigation part is brand new. We usually just walk around town looking for something interesting,”

“And that works?” I asked as I tried to imagine just walking around town to find… anything.

“Clarksville is just weird enough that we can usually find something after a little while,” He explained.

I mean… I didn’t really go out that much. I knew Clarksville being weird was a bit of a meme online, but I never knew that it was that bad. I guess I would just have to take Robby at his word.

“I guess that works out for…” I stopped as we came to a stop in front of our destination.

We had come far in our little walk. The buildings around us were sparse, a sign of how close we were to the city limits. The only tall building in sight was the one right in front of us.

It was an old catholic church, long abandoned for the newer that got built downtown. At the center was the building itself, a typical church with a spire and hall. The walls had been painted white once, but now the paint was peeling to reveal the brown wood beneath. Some of the windows were shattered, probably from people throwing stuff in if the lack of glass on the floor outside was any indication.

To the building’s left was an empty parking lot with a bit of trash scattered around. Nothing overwhelming, just the natural amount of trash you would expect to get in a city. Someone could probably clean the whole thing up in an hour or two with the right tools.

And of course, to the left was the enclosed courtyard. Coming off the side of the church was a brick wall that towered over me. In other words just tall enough that Robby and his boys could reach up and grab the top.

Robby stood in front of the wall and smiled at the five of us.

“Alright guy’s let’s do this,”


	5. Case 1 part 2

“So how are we supposed to get past this anyway,” I asked as I laid my hand on the rough brick wall. I glanced over at Robby and his boys who were already in the process of climbing over the top. “Oh,”

I crouched down before jumping up, trying to reach the top of the wall. My hands didn’t even get close.

“We’ll climb over and then unlock the gate for you,” Robby said as the last of his boys made it to the other side. I looked over to the gate in question and walked over to it.

It was an iron post fence with gaps way too small for me to squeeze through.

Shouldn’t we have checked the door first though? Why waste time climbing over if it was unlocked. I mean, odds were that it was locked but still.

I gave the door a small push, expecting the door to remain still. Instead it slowly moved at my touch.

“No way,” I said to myself as I pushed the door open and it swung all the way.

“Well that was easy,” I told myself as I walked into the courtyard. There was a brick path that went all around the square. The path was separated from the walls by a thin row of trees on each side except the one next to the church. Inside the path was what once would have been a small field of grass. But now the grass was mostly dead, with nothing but dirt and weeds to take their place. Scattered around the dirt floor were broken or moss-covered statues of angels. In the very center was the only still intact statue.

It was a bronze statue woman in a simple dress with four long angel wings that bent inward to cover her body. She had her hands together to pray, and she wore a head covering to cover her head. She was standing barefoot over a circular platform at the top of a column. The statue was short, maybe 3 feet tall. But with the column to stand on, the statue was even taller than me.

“How did you get here?”

I looked behind me and saw Robby approaching from the trees. I pointed back towards the gate.

“Door was unlocked,” I told him plainly.

“You mean we climbed that for nothing?” One of his boys complained before looking at the statue. “So this is the thing. Was is it supposed to do again?”

“So the rumor goes that the plate the angle is standing on spins so that it’s always watching whoever is in the courtyard,” Robby explained as he walked up to the statue and tried to spin the disk with his hand. He gave it a few pushed but the thing didn’t budge.

“Well it’s not just a loose disk and people being paranoid then,” I joked as we stood around the statue.

“It’s not moving,” One of the boys added unhelpfully.

“Well…” I said as I formed my thoughts. “It’s supposed to turn to look at whoever is in the courtyard right? Maybe it only works if there’s one person inside?”

“Yeah that might work,” Kenny said as we started talking about how we were going to do this. In the end we came to the plan that we would wait outside while each of us would have a turn walking around the courtyard alone.

Robby was the first one to try it out, with the rest of his boys following after him. Each one had the same experience. They walked around the courtyard, checking the statue to see if it was moving. It never did.

“Alright, just one left,” Kenny, the last of the boys to walk around the courtyard, said as he came out of the gate. “You ready for this Rita?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I told them with a shrug. “I mean, so far not much has happened,”

I walked into the courtyard, followed by a few more cheers of good luck. I glanced over at the statue who was still not moving. I walked down the path next to the church until I reached the corner. I turned around to check on the statue, expecting it to still be in place, watching the entrance.

It was looking right at me.

“Of course it is,” I mumbled to myself as I heard Robby calling me from over by the gate.

“How’s it going so far?” He asked as I looked back at him.

“Why don’t you guys come in and take a look for yourselves?” I told them as I watched the statue. I kept my eyes locked onto that thing as I noticed the door open out of the corner of my eyes.

“Whoa,” I heard one of the boys say as they walked in and started heading towards the statue. “It moved,”

“Looks like it,” I told them. “Wonder why it only did it to me though,” I said as I placed one of my hands behind my back and summoned forth the card, just in case.

“Maybe it only works for girls?” One of the boys suggested.

“Nah, I heard that the guy who started the rumor was a dude, so I don’t think that’s it,” Another one of them said.

“You got any ideas?” Robby asked me as I felt the magical card around in my hand.

“Nope,” I said as naturally as possible. “Can’t really think of anything that would make it work for me,” I explained as Robby started looking at the disk again.

“Nope, it’s still the same,” He said as he tried to move it again. He stepped and stood in front of the statue. “So now what?”

“I mean, we found the angel,” One of the boys said. “We proved that it moves. Not much else we can do with it,”

“I guess we can just go then,” One of the other boys said as they all started walking towards the gate. I followed after them as I noticed a certain yellow fog start to appear on the ground right past the trees.

“Hey that’s weird,” One of the boys said from up ahead.

“What’s wrong?” Robby asked as the boy in question looked back at the rest of us.

“Looks like the door locked behind us. I can’t get it open,” He explained as he knelt down to get a closer look at the lock. “Yeah looks like the door is designed to lock itself if it closes,”

“Okay, so we just climb out like we climbed in,” Kenny said as Robby looked back at him.

“Yeah, and how is Rita supposed to get out,” Robby asked as tore my eyes off the approaching fog. It had reached the path, how had none of them noticed it yet?

Was I the only one that could see it? If that was the case then we really needed to get out of here. I was not about to protect five other people from whatever was about to show up.

“Yeah just hang on,” One of the boys said as he knelt down next to the lock. “Always wanted a reason to try this out for real,”

“Try out what?” Robby asked as the boy turned around to show some metal tools.

“Lock picking. I know how to do it but I’ve never had a chance to try it out outside of practice,” He explained before turning back around and getting to work on the lock.

I watched him work as the fog slowly spread across the ground. It crept forward slowly, approaching the central angel statue bit by bit.

I wasn’t one to make bets often, but I would bet a nice chunk of cash that the fog reaching the statue would probably be bad news.

I stayed silent and hoped that no one else would say anything to distract the boy working the lock.

I gulped as the fog reached halfway to the statue. It wasn’t obvious, but I was pretty sure that the fog was getting faster.

But all I had to do was wait, it sounded like the boy was almost done anyway.

“So how long have you been practicing lock picking Chazz?”

Why Kenny?

“Oh, a few months now,” Chazz said while still working on the lock. “Figured it would be cool to learn. Never thought I would actually need to use in the real world though,”

I gulped as the fog got within a foot of the statue.

“Okay I got it,” Chazz said as I let out a light cheer. Robby and the rest of the boys gave me some weird looks as we all walked out. I glanced back at the courtyard once we were past the door.

The fog finally reached the statue before suddenly rising up and blocking my sight. I looked back at the boys who weren’t doing anything at the moment. So they couldn’t see the fog when it was on the ground but what about…?

“Hey Robby,” I said as I pointed to where the statue would have been if I could still see it. He turned to me and gave him the best ‘impish grin’ I could muster under the circumstances. “Nice statue right? I wonder if your mom would like it in her living room,”

Despite the situation, I couldn’t help but laugh at Robby’s face.

“Don’t you even joke about that,” He said as he looked into the gate. No reaction so I guess he couldn’t see the fog either.

“What’s she talking about?” One of the remaining boys asked.

“Robby’s mom has a bit of a…” I looked over at Robby. “What would be a nice way to put it?”

“Hoarding problem,” He said as I blinked in surprise.

“I said a nice way dude,” I protested even though he was totally right. “She would put that thing in the middle of your living room though,”

“She would,” He said with a nod. “I mean, it looks kind of cool but it’s way too creepy to see it every day first thing in the morning,”

I looked into the door and nodded in agreement. Even though I couldn’t see a thing. Maybe I should start playing poker, I apparently had a decent poker face.

I split off from the rest of the boys quickly after that. It was still early, so they were apparently going to go look for something else to do. I instead decided to head back home for the night and start my weekend.

As I walked down the city street I noticed a book store. I didn’t really pass by this part of town too much, so it would make sense that I’d never known about it before.

Needless to say, I walked in without an ounce of hesitation.

I took a deep breath as I walked in through the door, really taking in that book smell. The bookstore had four lines of bookshelves going down the length of the store with the back and side walls acting as extra shelves. The front wall was taken up by the counter and the front window.

I made sure to get out of the way o the entrance and closed my eyes to take it all in.

“Thanks, Aunt Sherry,”

I opened my eyes at the familiar voice. Now wasn’t this a coincidence. I looked over at the counter and saw the source of the voice.

“Zach wasn’t expecting to see you tonight,” I said, making him jump. He turned around as I started walking down the length of the bookshelf.

“Rita, what are you doing here?” He told me as I looked over the book on the shelf. There wasn’t much that was really calling out to me that I hadn’t already read.

“I am a simple woman, I see a book store, I walk in,” I told him as I paused my quest. “You find anything interesting here?”

“I actually came to pick something up,” He said as he nervously held up a copy of fangs over dreams, the book I was reading now.

“Oh, you finished fangs over Hearts then?” I asked as he shook his head.

“No, but my aunt told me that if I liked the first one to just get the second book now,” He said as he set the book on the counter.

“What a coincidence, I was going to tell you the same exact thing on Monday,” I told him with a nervous laugh. I had to think of something to change the conversation with and I needed to think of it quickly.

“So are you going to introduce me?”

Oh, thank you random cashier lady, you beautiful human being you. Zach jumped liked he had forgotten that she was sitting there.

“Oh sorry, Aunt Sherry,” He said as he turned to me. “Rita, this is my Aunt Sherry. She’s the one who introduced me to Fangs over Hearts,”

“Oh, is that so,” I said as I looked at the woman who had unknowingly helped me make my first friend since elementary school. She was a pretty normal-looking woman with brown hair done up in a bun and a pair of glasses on her face.

“Aunt Sherry, this is Rita. She’s the one I was talking about earlier, the friend that I read with at lunch,”

Friend…

Friend…

Friend…

“Rita you okay?”

I jumped as I noticed Zach placing his hand on my shoulder. I looked down at his hand and smiled.

“You think of me as a friend?” I demanded.

“Uhm… yes?” He said as I blink and took it in. “Are we not?”

“I made a friend,” I whispered as I placed my hands together and bent over a little. “I did it,”

“You okay kid?”

I looked up at Sherry who was looking at me with a concerned look or some reason…

Oh, I probably looked like a crazy person.

“I’m fine,” I said maybe a little too quickly. “Just, excited over making my first real friend in a long time,” I explained.

“Oh is that so?” Sherry said as she gave Zach a weird grin.

“Yeah, oh that’s right,” I said as I glanced over at the copy of fangs over dreams on the counter. “You wouldn’t happen to have a copy of fangs over skies would you?”

I was halfway done through the second book and the way things were going, I might as well have the third ready to go. Sherry gave me a kind of predatory grin as I explained my reasons for wanting the third book in the series.

I walked out of the store with the book in a shopping bag.

I had my fill of fun for the day, and now all that was left was business. One particular kind of business in fact. I sat at the bus stop that would take me home as I thought about what I had seen today. A single question played over and over again in my mind.

“What am I going to do about that statue?”


	6. case 1 part 3

I stood in front of the church again as dawn broke over the city.

It was the morning after the day that I first found the angel and my parents thought I was going on a normal morning walk. Oh how little they knew.

No, instead I was out here playing the hero.

If that fog had been any indication, this place had some sort of connection with that weird TV world. And from what I could hear around town and online, word about the ‘moving angel’ was already spreading. How long until someone walks in and stays just long enough to get caught in the fog.

Better it be someone like me who at least has some idea of what to expect. Someone who had already pulled this off once before.

I opened the gate and walked in as I steeled myself. The memory of the pain from the lightning blast played again in my head as I tried to ignore it.

It had hurt, but I had lived.

Just like I was going to do today.

I walked up to the statue and waited for a bit. I took a deep breath before glancing down.

The fog had already reached halfway to my feet.

Now that I was actually waiting for it, the fog felt slower. Kind of annoying to be honest. Drawing it out made it worse, and I started wishing for it to just get to the statue to get this over with.

I let out an annoyed sigh as the fog finally reached its target. I stepped back and prepare myself as I heard a noise from behind me. I glanced back to see the yellow fog at the base of the walls rise up until they surrounded me on three sides.

The church itself was still there though which was nice.

That aside, I still had the statue to deal with. I looked back to it and saw the fog start to climb up the column that it was standing on. The fog reached the feet of the angel and instead o climbing any further it went into the angel and started filling it with a golden glow.

I squinted as the glow got stronger and stronger until I was finally forced to close my eyes to block out the light. The light faded after a second and I opened my eyes again, trying to keep the angel in my sights.

And boy, did I get a sight.

The angel was no longer stone. She was also no longer 3 feet tall. Balanced on the pedestal was a fully grown woman made of flesh and blood.

And a lot of flesh too… Was I blushing, because I was trying not to blush?

She still had her long hair and bare feet as well as her four wings. They were made from golden feathers now but they still looked the same. But aside from that, she looked almost unrecognizable.

Instead of the simple dress her statute had, she was wearing a series of black leather straps that only covered… ‘strategic’ parts of her body. Aside from those her only other clothing was a cloth band over her eyes decorated with an eye.

Well, unless you counted chains as clothing, in which case she had a pair of chains as well. Each one was connected to an iron bracelet on her wrist. With the way she was holding them, she looked like she could start swinging them around at a moment’s notice.

She… turned her head towards me and started floating above the disc.

“Child of man, are you here for penance?”

Her lips didn’t move. Her lips didn’t move and I could hear her voice all around me. Was she in my head? I was pretty sure she was in my head.

“What do you mean by penance?” I asked as I looked around to see if there was anything else around.

There wasn’t.

“My lord has placed me here to perform a task. I am here to accept penance from humans who have defied the lord and partaken in unholy arts,”

“What do you mean by unholy arts?” I asked trying to not think about the fire balls and curses I was throwing around last week.

“The power called ‘Persona’. A vile magic created from the strength of the human heart,” She explained. “For power to be born from such a place is unacceptable to the cycle,”

“I see,” I told her with a gulp. “So what kind of penance are we talking about here?”

“Are you here to offer penance then?” She asked as she twitched her wrists and clanked her chains.  
“I would rather know what the penance entails before answering that,” I said as I raised up a nervous finger.

“There can only be one penance that can be offered that can outweigh the sin of engaging in the vilest of sorcery,” She said as she lifted her hand up a little before snapping it back down. The chain sang through the air as it followed her movements until it slammed back onto the ground, kicking up a line of dust. “The life of the sinner, given over to be purified,”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” I said as I summoned the card behind my back. “I’m going to have to pass on that whole penance thing,”

“If penance will not be given,” The angel said as she rose higher into the air. “Then penance shall be taken,”

“Come Persona,” I summoned Lamia just as the Angel dove right at me. Lamia formed an Agi and threw it at the angel as she drew her arm back. She twirled to the side as the fireball went past her. Lamia and I dove to the side as the Angel swung both chains down on the ground where I had been standing.

I scrambled to my feet as quickly as I could as the angle swung back around at me. I summoned Lamia again who rushed forward into the air with her nails glowing purple.

As fast as she was, she wasn’t a quick turner was she? Lamia crashed into her back and stabbed her nails in. Lamia started to fade away just as the angle rolled in the air and swung both chains into Lamia.

I grunted as the chains smashed into Lamia’s gut and I felt the pain mirrored on my own body. It was nowhere near the pain I had felt during the lightning bolt, but it was enough to make one thing clear.

Any damage taken by Lamia was mirrored back to me. Which I guessed made sense, she was a part of me.

Still, even if I did take the hit, at least I got something out of it. I watched the still turning angel and waited for the purple glow of the poison to start.

It never came. Instead she completed her turn and came flying towards me.

Did Blight fang only have a chance to poison, or was the angel immune? Either way I had to think of something else and think of it fast.

Okay… why had she broken off in the first place? All it had done was open her to attack and make her attack from a different direction, I glanced back and saw the church behind me…

She was an angel, a servant of God. This was a church, a house of God. What kind of servant destroys her master’s house?

If this worked then whoever made this trap was an idiot.

I rushed for the door, summoning Lamia mid-run. She slammed into the door and bust it down just quickly enough for me to run into the church without slowing down.

I backed away from the door and got ready for anything.

Instead of bursting through the door like me, the angel calmly landed on the ground and walked in through the door.

“To think that such a vile creature would seek sanctuary,” She said as started walking towards me. “You only prolong your own demise,”

“Persona,” I said as Lamia appeared on top one of the pews. I could feel her magic as it formed into a curse that washed over the angel. “You know I’m starting to understand why my parents never took me to church,”

The angel grimaced, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t just because of the Rakunda that I just hit her with.

“When you failed to submit to the lord, I believed you to be some sort of heathen at worse and a heretic at best,” She said as she held her hand up and the chain started to glow. “But to think I was facing something even worse, an apostate,”

“Is that really worse?” I asked as Lamia shot a fireball at the angel. Her head snapped up as the chain came to life and sliced the fireball in half.

“Of course it is,” She explained as both chains started rushing around the church, avoiding any and all parts of the church and instead coming right at me.

I ducked under a pew as the chains flew overhead and the angel kept talking.

“At least the heretic worships the lord, even if they do so incorrectly. At least the heathen carries some faith in their heart, even if it placed in pagan gods. But the apostate?” She said as the chains shrieked through the air. Despite the speed of the chains in the air, the angel was speaking as calmly as ever.

“The apostate has nothing in their heart. None are as deserving as death as they are,” She announced as the chains wrapped around the pew and came right at me.

I rolled to the side as they flew past me again, only for the chains to stop in place.

I got to my feet and looked around the room.

The chains had stopped moving and had instead frozen in place. The chains were glowing with a golden light that looked like they were holding the chains up.

I reached into my pocket and grabbed the receipt of the book that I got yesterday. I still had it and it looked like it was about to come in handy.

I tossed the already crumpled up ball of paper onto one of the nearby chains.

It burst into flames at mere contact.

“You have stepped onto holy ground. I cannot attack you within this,” The angle explained. “However if you were to just so happen to touch one my chains and burn to death… well wouldn’t that be such a dreadful accident,”

I had to admit, she somehow managed to sound completely sincere about my death counting as an accident. Still I could see a bit of a flaw in her plan.

“Wouldn’t the fires burn down the church too?” I pointed out.

“These chains create holy flames,” She calmly explained. “Even if you were to collapse onto the ground burning, not a single beam or nail of this place would catch fire,”

Well there went that idea. Had to think of something else. The air was so thick with chains that I didn’t have room to summon Lamia. Not unless I was okay with them going through here. And considering that I just learned that damage to Lamia was reflected back onto me, maybe not the best move.

Had to keep her talking while I thought of something else.

“So who exactly put you here?” I asked, hoping for more information on what was going on.

“Why the lord of course,” The Angel said clearly. “Who else would have command over me?”

Okay so I could see three possibilities here. First one, she was telling the truth in which case… yikes. Maybe best for my sanity to just assume that that one’s not the correct choice here. Second choice is that she's lying. In that case there wasn’t really a point in asking her questions. And the final option was that she thought she was telling the truth.

I could work with that last one.

“So you were put here to kill Persona users right?” I asked as I looked around for anything in the room that I could grab without burning myself. “Why? Any reason besides it being ‘dark magic’? Because that doesn’t sound like enough for me,”

“It is not your place to question the ways of the Lord, nor is it mine to explain them to you,” She said, just as calmly as when we started.

I had also finished my search and it did not look good. The only thing close to me was a copy of the bible that had been left on the pew. With nothing else to work with, I just stood there, the church dead silent except for the rustling of chains…

Chains that had been dead quiet a few seconds ago.

There was no way that it was that simple was it?

“I don’t know, I would say that anyone who gives his creations free will and then gets annoyed when they don’t worship at his feet is a pretty crummy creator,” I told her before waiting for her reaction.

“That you cannot see the greatness in his plan is the fault of none but yourself,”

And there it was. Her voice, posture, and face were all as emotionless as ever. But the chains…

The chains were rustling even harder. They clinked and jumped at me, like she wanted to break her own rule and attack me. She was holding back… and I could work with that.

Because even if I was going to die, I wasn’t going to die without making this angel regret being created.

I grabbed the bible from the chair and held it open to the first page.

“Just what are you planning on doing with that?” The chains stopped moving, almost like they were stunned into confusion. “Are you planning on converting now? I have to warn you that doing so will not save your life,”

“So no matter what, you’re going to kill me? No way to talk you out of this or settle this diplomatically?”

The Angle just shook her head.

“Okay then, in that case before I die, I want to test something,” I snapped the book closed and then held it over a chain.

I dropped the book as the chains went wild.

“You abomination,”

I sneered as I caught the book with my other hand. “I guess the chains really are selective about what they burn,”

“Handle that holy book with care Apostate,” The angle demanded as the chains shook. I swiftly ignored her and opened the book back up.

I quickly closed my eyes and asked forgiveness from every book in the world for what I knew I had to do.

“Now let’s see how the pages do,” I tenderly grabbed the edge of the page and tore it off.

The chains exploded in a flurry of movement, filling the air with screams as flames leapt off them and landed harmlessly on the church floor.

“What are you doing?” The angle screamed in my head.

Looked like she really could do other emotions.

“Well I figured,” I told her as I set the torn page down and grabbed the second.

“That if the book is immune to the chains,”

Rip.

“Well then the pages should be too,”

Rip.

“And I the pages are immune,”

Rip.

“Well then I can use the pages,”

Rip.

“As armor to get past your chains,”

Rip.

“Might take me a while to get enough pages to cover myself in though,”

Rip.

“But I have you here for company, so that’s nice,”

I gave the angel the most sincere, happiest smile I could as I gleefully tore off another page.

She screamed in rage as she broke. The chains all rose up and then fell back down on me like two chains once more. I summoned Lamia who pulled me out of the way as the chains broke through the floorboards.

The screaming grew louder.

The angle rushed forward, the chains falling to her sides as she knelt around the hole she had just made.

“No no no,” She repeated as she reached into the hole and grabbed the wooden boards below. After pulling them back up she set them to the side before digging back into the hole.

Was she…? Oh my god she was. She was reaching for each individual splinter.

Reaching for something so small probably meant that she was completely distracted. And from what I could see, my Rakunda curse was still on her, so her defenses were down.

She was wide open and I wasn’t going to get a better shot.

I crushed Lamia’s card as she appeared in front of me.

“Burn,” I commanded as lamia sent a fireball at the angel who burst into flames. Unlike her own holy flames, my fires jumped from her burning body to the wood around her.

I turned around and walked away, the church beginning to burn along with its angel. I put some distance between us and sat down to watch the flames.

It took a while, but eventually, I was sitting in front of a burned down husk, no trace of an angel or a church in sight.

I got to my feet and walked to the gate to the courtyard. Looking past the bars, all I could see was an endless sea of fog.

“Well now what?

Case 1 end


	7. Case 2 part 1

I pushed at the gate and frowned as it refused to budge.

“Okay let’s think about this,”

I had expected the fog to clear and put me back in the normal world after dealing with the angel. But now here I was, stuck.

Maybe I had to head out and find an exit, maybe a TV?

Of course, that was assuming that there even was a world out there. There was a chance that there was nothing out there past the walls.

Still, just standing around here wasn’t going to do anything, so it was time to strike out into the great unknown.

“Persona,” I summoned Lamia who picked me up in her arms and carried me over the wall.

To my relief, there was indeed a floor out here. Lamia set me down on the road right outside the church.

The fog was thick, almost impossibly so. I could see around myself well enough, but everything past that was gone. Still from what I could remember, there should have been a building right in front of me.

I held my arm out and started waking forward carefully. As it turned out, I hadn’t even needed to do so. The building crept out of the fog just as my hand was about to touch it.

I glanced to my sides. Even standing with my chest to the wall, the fog was too thick to see the ends of the building. I slowly made my way to the buildings, door, hoping that the door would be open, there was less fog inside, and that they had a big TV.

A quick check of the doorknob would prove the first hope false. And with that part of the plan gone, the other two didn’t really matter. 

I thought about using Lamia to break the door down, but hesitated. There was still too much I didn’t know about his world. For all I knew, anything I did in here would reflect back on the normal world. I had burnt down the church because I needed to, but no reason to add random vandalism to a church arson.

The news in this town was already busy as it was, I didn’t need to add stuff on top of it.

“Come Lamia,” I had hoped that my Persona would be able to see better in the fog but that was also a no go. I kept her out as I started walking back in the direction of home. So far the TV in my living room was the only way back, so it was going to act my goal for now.

Only one small problem.

“Why is it so far?” I demanded of the fog as we passed by an iron fence decorated with a certain sign. It told the world that this was Oliver Roberts’s memorial park.

It told me that I was still halfway to my apartment building.

Why did the church have to be so far away anyway?

Wait…

If the purpose of the church and the angel was to act as a trap for Persona users, why was it in the middle of nowhere? The more I thought about this trap, the less sense it made.

There was something that I was missing. And I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to investigate unless I managed to get back to the normal world.

“This is so frustrating,” I grumbled as I walked into the park. Cutting through it was a pretty good short cut. Of course I would have to be careful to not accidentally walk into any trees. 

So of course I strayed off the path almost right away and ran headfirst into a tree.

Hey it wasn’t my fault that the fog was thick enough in the park to completely block the ground from my vision.

“Why?” I growled as I crouched down and rubbed the spot on my face that had hit the tree. “How could this get any worse?”

I blinked as I looked around for the giant dragon or zombie army that my tempting of fate had summoned.

To my surprise, I was still all alone in the fog-filled park.

“Looks like my life hasn’t turned into as much of a fantasy as I though it has,” I heard a strange buzz behind me. I turned around and saw a shady figure approaching me. It was smallish and flying through the air. As it got closer the buzzing got louder.

“Oh me and my big mouth,” I grumbled as I ducked out of the way of the giant robot bee. I could just barely see it stab its stinger into the tree that I just had bonked my head on.

I could just make out the robot bee in the fog. It was about the size of my torso. It was made of yellow and white metal that was arranged in stripes. It had six skinny metal legs that ended with sharpened points. Its head had eyes made of green glass panels.

“Any chance that you’re the type of bee that dies after stinging once?” I asked the bee as it dug its feet into the tree and pulled its stinger out. “Doesn’t look like it,”

I summoned the card to my hand and got ready for a fight when I heard more buzzing behind me. I glanced back and saw three more shady figures approaching.

“Nope,” I ran off into the fog following the path the best I could. Let’s see, the park path made a left here… a right here… another right here.

“Okay maybe not quite,” I said as I ran into a wall. This would be a lot easier if I could see anything. Well at least I was at the wall, and if I was at the wall then…

I took off running to the right as the sound of buzzing filled my ears again. No time to think when I had four murder bees after me. I was close to the entrance to the park anyway… at least I was pretty sure I was.

I smiled as I came up to an opening in the wall. I turned the corner and ran right into something. I was thrown back and landed on the ground.

“Oh come on again,” I mumbled as I got to my feet and patted the dust off of me. “What did I even run… into,”

I paused as I looked at just what I had hit. It was a person… but not really. It was more like a wireframe outline of a person. I had hit them hard enough to send them to the ground too.

I watched as they got to their feet.

“Sorry about that but I’m being chased by some bees and you can’t hear me can you?” Instead of answering, the wireframe calmly got to its feet and looked around before shrugging its shoulders. It walked forward at me, like it was going to attempt to just go through me. I stepped to the side and let it pass, not wanting to mess with it.

This world was getting weirder and weirder…

And also more dangerous if that growing buzzing sound was any indication. I ran past the wireframe and out of the park as I heard another buzzing sound come from in front of me. I looked up and saw one of the vague figures approaching from the sky. I glanced back and saw the rest still chasing after me from behind.

This time I summoned Lamia, my other self appearing in the air next to me, flying by my side as I kept running. I took aim at the blurry figure before letting loose an Agi that ripped through the fog and hit the revealed bee.

The flames consumed the bee in a giant blast that cleared the fog around the bee. It came back in to cover the area again, but I still got a good look at the metal bee as it dropped from the sky.

I heard it hit the ground next to me as I kept running towards home. I had Lamia snap her tail at where the metal bee landed as we ran past it. Was it a bit unfair to attack someone when they were down, especially with an attack that wasn’t all that strong?

Yes and I didn’t care. If the metal bees had a problem with it, they could stop attacking me.

I kept running as I reached my building, rushing into the stairwell and climbing up. Around the third floor, I could start to hear the buzzing coming from below.

Stupid bees and their flying. It really ought to be cheating.

Cheating bees or no I made it to my floor before they could catch up to me. I swung the door open and slammed it shut before the bees could even spot me.

I cringed for a bit, expecting my mom to yell at me for slamming the door, before remembering my situation.

“I guess today has had some upsides,” I walked back from the door slowly, the sounds of buzzing nowhere to be heard.

To my surprise, the inside of my apartment was free of fog. There was still a weird yellow filter over everything though. But you know what, I was just happy to see the area around me again.

“Hello feet,” I said as I bent down and looked at the floor. “I missed you two,” I came back up and went into the kitchen. To my surprise, there were two wireframes in there. One of them was standing next to the fridge while the other was sitting at the table.

I painted my parents over the wireframes in my mind. They fit perfectly.

“So what?” I questioned as I walked around the standing wireframe that I was pretty sure was my dad. “People in the normal world get represented by wireframes in this one? But then why didn’t I see more of them while walking thought that super thick fog that blocked all my vision and now it makes sense,”

I walked out of the kitchen wondering just how many wireframes I had walked or run past on my way here.

“Now where should we go?” My eyes looked over at my room. I shrugged my shoulders and walked in.

I grimaced as I saw my walls. This yellow filter was not doing my room any favors. Other than that, everything was the same. The same giant bookshelf, the same desk with Fangs over Hearts on top of it, and the same box on top of my bed.

I stopped as I walked past my bed. I looked back at the box that had not been there when I had left home this morning.

I picked up the box and looked it over. It was a plain brown box with a piece of tape holding it closed. Most of the box was bare, expect for one image that looked like it had been stamped on with black ink.

A girl wearing a crop top and with a snake tail. Lamia.

“I guess this is mine then,” I told myself as I looked around the room for a pair of scissors or something else to cut it open…

I set the box down on the bed and summoned Lamia.

“Don’t let anyone tell you that magic powers don’t have practical applications,” I said as Lamia held her long, claw-like nail over the tape and started cutting it through.

The box opened up to two objects. The first was a pair of goggles and the other was a note.

I grabbed the note and hopped that the goggles weren’t a gift from my parents.

“If you’re reading this, then this means that you’ve found yourself in the world underneath,” I read aloud from the note. “If you wish to leave to return to the world above, simply find the entrance or exit that you used on your first visit. However be warned, the exit only functions if no shadows are in the area. If there are any around, they must be eliminated first. P.S. The goggles are a gift” I glanced down at the goggles.

“They’ll prove to be useful. We’re expecting great things from you. Signed, question mark, question mark, question mark,”

I blinked twice as I read over that last part again.

“What’s the point of singing a letter with three question mars? Just don’t sign it,” I said as I tossed the note back into the box.

Well, at least know I knew how to get out of here. I had to go through the TV again… but first I had some pest control to do. I looked down at the box and picked up the goggles again.

They were big aviators with red lenses and black frame. The strap on the back was made from leather painted in red and black stripes. I put them on and blinked at the world around. I had been expecting a red filter to replace the yellow one, but the yellow one was still in place.

I glanced at my mirror and looked at myself. I had to admit, despite my dangerous situation, I liked the goggles. The colors matched my red hoodie and my black pants. I smiled as I called Lamia to me. I stood next to her as I noticed a small window in front of her. I looked at it as it expanded into what I could only call a stat sheet.

“Oh, so that’s what they do,”


	8. Case 2 part 2

I looked Lamia over as I read her… stats.

“Her stats… Oh that is as weird to say as it is to think,” I shivered and tried to power through it as I looked at the window.

Despite using the word stats, there really wasn’t any numbers. To the left were two circles and a three cards laid out in a row. The two circles were green and yellow respectively while two of the cards were purple with the last one blacked out and broken.

I looked them over and couldn’t figure out what they could mean. Green in video game usually meant life… but then why was it a circle instead of a bar? And why were the colors in both circles pulsing and moving like some sort of audio indicator?

As for the cards… They looked just like the back of the card I used to summon Lamia. Lamia had taken one hit back when I fought the angel, and one of the cards was broken.

If I was right, then I would have to be careful to not let Lamia get hit two more times. I didn’t even want to wonder about what would happen if all three of those cards broke.

I looked away from the bar and read the rest of the information in the window.

At the top was the name ‘Lamia’ followed by the word Hermit in brackets. Below that was a long line of squares with symbols with a second line of squares underneath. Most of the second row was empty except for three. Under the blocks with a flame and skull, there was the word resist. Under the snowflake was the word weak.

“I knew that I didn’t like the cold but you didn’t have to call me out like this,” Who was I even calling out with that? The goggles? The box? Myself?

I was also surprised to see that I didn’t have the word weak under the lightning bolt, but I guess it didn’t matter. Under that was a list labeled ‘skills’. It had three entries, Agi, Rakunda and blight fang.

Agi and Rakunda were what I had expected them to be, a weak fire spell and a curse to lower defense respectively. However blight fang had held a surprise. It was a physical attack with a chance to poison. That explained why it hadn’t worked on the angel. I had just been unlucky.

Something about that rubbed me the wrong way. At least I know knew that I couldn’t count on it poisoning every time. I could count on it…

Now that I looked at it, it didn’t give me a set percentage did it? I wondered why that was.

I dismissed the screen as I walked out of the room. I had seen everything that that the information on Lamia had to offer, and now it was time to hopefully head home.

The TV lay in front of me turned off, the black screen acting as a mirror and allowing me to see myself as I gulped. I reached my fingers out to brush the screen, and nothing happened.

“The Bees must still be around,” I grumbled as I set my arm down and headed out to fry some robots.

I walked out of the apartment and looked around at my now nearly fogless surroundings. I grabbed the goggles and lowered them slightly so that half my vision was seeing through them.

Yep, they were getting rid of the fog. Thank you magic goggles from strangers.

I made my way back to the stairwell and started climbing back up. It was halfway up the building when I noticed something… off. Today I had fought an angel and then outran a squad of metal bees. And now I was marching up the stairs without breaking a sweat.

I should have been dying and curing my lack of cardio.

Is it the world that allows me to do this or getting a Persona? I would have to figure it out after getting back to the normal world.

I made it to the roof without trouble and looked around. I had never been up here before and now that I had, it was kind of cool. The floor was made from some sort of gray material that felt sturdy under my feet. Aside from the rectangular stairwell-containing box that I came out of, there wasn’t much else up here.

There were some boxes around that had fans inside as well as some open vents and pipes. What they did, I had no clue. There was also a wall running along the edge of the building, probably to keep people from falling off.

I walked to the edge, bracing myself on the chest high wall to see over the city. It was a strange sight to say the least. The sun was gone, the sky instead filled with an endless sea of fog. The city below was pretty much the same, a bunch of buildings emerging from the fog. I guess even the goggles had their limits.

Still for all that I could see from my high vantage point, I couldn’t spot the bees anywhere. Maybe they had given up and trying the TV would work now? Or maybe they were gone and whatever monster I had to fight was somewhere else in the building. Or maybe…

“Or maybe they’re right behind me,” I sighed as I heard buzzing behind me. I turned around and saw the three bees rising over the edge of the wall on the opposite side of the one I was in front of.

As they appeared, the window appeared under them. I glanced at it and it expanded into a smaller version of the box that had appeared for Lamia.

All I really got out of it was the two rows of symbols. The top row was the same but the bottom row was mostly filled with question marks. The only exceptions were an empty box under a diagonal straight line and the word weak under a flame…

“It can’t be that easy?” I muttered to myself as the bees came flying at me. I summoned lamia and had her shot an Agi at the central bee. The other two broke off as the central bee was swallowed in flames. It fell to the ground as I ran up and called for Lamia’s fangs again.

I stabbed the bee with the two daggers and jumped away as it faded to nothing. I looked over at the two other bees who were watching me wearily.

A few seconds later, I was walking up to two scorched bees on the ground. I bent down and lazily stabbed one to death before calmly doing the same to the other.

I stood in the center of the roof, just kind of looking at the spot where the bees had been.

“Elemental weaknesses are broken!” I screamed into the void in disbelief.

After calming down, I headed back to my apartment and stood in front of the TV again. This time something happened when I got my hand close to it. As my hand neared it, the TV began to fill with static. When I touched it, the static began to crawl up my hand again. Instead of trying to pull it out, I dove it in deeper this time.

I felt the same strange pulling sensation and when I opened my eyes I was standing at the bus stop in front of my house. I took off my goggles and looked around. There was no fog in sight and a couple of non-wireframe people walking around.

I pulled out my phone and checked the time.

“This has been one strange day and it’s not even noon yet,” I put the phone away and walked back up the apartment.

“I’m home,” I announced as I closed the door behind me. As the door shut quietly, I took a moment to remember the feeling of smashing it shut in the other world.

No, not the other world. What had the note called it, the world underneath?

Just another thing to worry about I guess. I could think it over some other day. For now I had to deal with the woman emerging from the kitchen and marching over to me.

“Where have you been? We were starting to get worried,” She told me as I gave her a guilty smile.

“I got a little off track on my walk. You have no idea how long it took me to get back,” I explained.

“Just try not to do it again,” My mom sighed as I smelled something in the air.

“Sure thing… now the thing about walking around a lot is that it works up one heck of an appetite,” I cheekily grinned as my mom rolled her eyes and led me straight to the breakfast plate still on the table.

My breakfast tasted different today. It tasted like… victory.

After finishing off my plate, I walked back into my room. I reaching into my hoodie pocket and pulled out my goggles. I put them back on, adjusting them over my face till they fit on right.

Despite the red lenses, the room was still its normal color. I picked up the book on my desk and held it open. Nothing special there.

I set the book down and summoned Lamia. When I looked her over, I could still see the info box. It opened up and I could see all the information again.

I was about to close it when I saw something that caught my eye.

That first time that I got hit by that snake… the lightning hurt so much. I could still perfectly remember the pain. But the box under the lightning box was empty. If that was normal damage and I was weak to ice…

I shivered as I imagined what that might have been like.

I closed the box and laid down on my bed. The box was gone now, as was the note.

“Who the heck was that?” I asked myself as I thought about the strange message. “We’re expecting great things from you. Who’s we… and what great thing am I expected to do?”

The question stayed in my head for the rest of the weekend. By the time I headed to school on Monday, I was still wondering about it.

“Well, I guess I’ll just wait for the next weird thing to pop up,” I told myself as I got off the bus. I stood in front of the school and let out a sigh. “I’m already expecting more weirdness to come my way,”

I mean, I was already two incidents deep. Once and I could just say that it was a one-time thing… but twice was the start of a pattern. There was no way there wasn’t a third thing coming. If there wasn’t I’d buy myself a hat and eat.

…Maybe I should buy a hat anyway? I had already switched out my hoodie to a new one, why not add a hat on top of that? But what kind of hat to wear?

The question of what was expected of me was thrown out as hatty thoughts filled my head until lunch time.

“So Fedoras are out, but what about…” I mumbled to myself as I sat down on the bench next to a dead looking Zach. I opened up my bag and reached in for…

“Are you okay?” I sat back up and looked at Zach’s eyes. If eyes were the windows to the soul, then Zach must have sold his cause those things were empty.

“So you finished fangs over hearts then?” I guessed. He gave me a quick nod before sitting back.

“How could they end a book like that?”

“I know right?”

“I’m so glad I bought the second book ahead of time,”

“I know right?”

“I need to know how this goes,”

“I know right?” I said as I pulled out the copy of Fangs over Skies. “Good luck on that. I’ll be here reading the end of the trilogy,”

He sighed as he took out his book and turned to the first page.

“Um… hey,”

We both put our books down and snapped our heads towards the disturbance.

It was one of Robby’s boys, Kenny if I remembered right. He was flinching and watching the two of us carefully.

“Hi?” He said as I remembered what he had talked about the last time I had seen him. “Um, I wanted to apologize,”

“Oh right, this,” I got to my feet and put my book back into my bag before hanging it over my shoulder. “I’ll leave you two to it,”

I left the two behind before walking up to my next class. It was still some time till it started, but it was probably mostly empty and the perfect back up spot to read.

And who knew, maybe I would end up falling into another incident on the way there.

Case 2 end


	9. Case 3 part 1

As it turned out, I did not in fact bumble my way into a new incident on the way to the classroom. In fact the most interesting thing to happen to me over the course of the week was finishing up Fangs over skies. A title that had nothing to do with the plot except for the airship that Jesini had ended up captaining.

I wasn’t sure what I had been expecting, but sky pirate werewolf girl fighting the evil empire including her psycho ex-boyfriend was not it. Not that I hadn’t enjoyed it. I had, and looked forward to seeing the book get butchered in the inevitable big studio movie adaptation. Which was on its way if the trailer for the adaptation of fangs over hearts was any indication.

In more positive news, I had ended up not getting a hat. I had tried on a few with the goggles on and the outcome had always ended up being a sense of it being too much.

So when I opened the door to the art room one Friday after school, I did so with a bare head.

“Alright Zach, what did you want to show me?” I walked into the art room and saw Zach drawing at a canvas.

Yeah as it turned out, Zach did things other than reading. In fact he was mostly an artist, just one that tended to play, read, and watch other media to give him ideas of his artwork.

“I wanted to show you this,” Zach said as he turned the painting around and I saw what he had been working on the last few days.

It was a scene from Fangs over hearts, specifically the part where the three werewolves set out for the first time. They’re standing on a narrow bridge over the canyon. Eril was leading the way with Jesini and Rowie following behind. Fittingly, the stone under Rowie was crumbling while the ground under Eril looked a bit… paler then the rest, like it had been corrupted.

Or maybe that was just me projecting what I knew happened in the story onto the painting. Either way the only one who didn’t look like they were in any danger was Jesini which was fitting. 

“Look’s nice,” I nodded. “Said the person with no art knowledge,”

“I don’t need the critique of an art critic,” He explained as he leaned back on his stool, making me worry that he was about to fall over. “I need a fangs over… what even is the name of the series in general?”

“I think I’ve heard it called the fangs over trilogy,” I clarified for him as continued without missing a beat.

“I need a fangs over fan’s opinion,” He pointed at the painting. “All I need to know is if you look at this and say ‘I want to put this on my wall’. By the way if the answer is yes do you want it?”

“Yes now…” I stopped mid-leap and thought about my actions like I was supposed to. I backed up and gave Zach a suspicious glare. “Why are you trying to get rid of this painting Zach?”

“Because my dad said if I brought one more painting home he was going to lose his mind,” He explained as a frown came over my face.

“Does he not like your paintings?” Zach looked at me in confusion before laughing.

“No he’s okay with me painting. In fact he’s so okay with it that he let me cover 90% of our walls with my art,”

“I think I’m starting to see your dad’s problem,” I said blankly. “How many paintings cover your walls now?”

He turned his back towards me to look at his painting, his hand son his sides. After a second or two, he tilted his head back at me.

“I don't know, how many breads have you eaten in your life?”

“You monster,” I grunted. “Fine, I’ll submit to your demand,”

I carefully grabbed the edges of the painting and lifted it up.

“…Hey Zach?”

“Yeah Rita?”

“How am I supposed to take this thing home?”

“I have no idea,” He admitted as I set the painting down.

“How do you normally take your paintings home then?” I asked.

“Well I normally get picked up by my dad,” He explained as he looked out the window. “He’s usually here by now though. He should have called me to let me know he was about to get here though,” 

And just like that, I head the chorus of a snappy pop song come from Zach’s pocket. He reached into it and pulled out his phone, filling the room with music in the process.

“Hey dad… Okay… Okay,” After a little while of this he hanged up and put his phone away. “Looks like I’m taking the city bus today,”

“Something happen?” I asked as he sighed.

“Just some trouble at my dad’s job. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s a pain when it does,” He told me as we both looked at the painting again. I wracked my brain when I came up with something.

“I know. I can hand this to Uncle Nick for storage,” Zach looked at me like I had grown a second head.

“Going to need a bit more context for that one,”

“You’ve never been to Uncle Nick’s storage vaults?” The blank look on Zach’s face was all I needed to know. “It’s business in town. Due to some weird legal shenanigans that I don’t care enough to understand, Uncle Nick owns pretty much the entire basement underneath the building where his shop is. So he separated the whole thing into units and started renting out the spaces as storage,”

“Aren’t most storage spaces like big buildings or something?”

“Yeah but it’s pretty useful to have one in the middle of town. My family has on his vaults rented out so I can put the painting there and then go pick it up with my parents tomorrow,”

“Wait did you just say vault?”

“Oh yeah he calls them vaults. Want to come see? It’s on shopping street so its close by,”

Zach thought it over for a bit before finally nodding.

“Alright, lead the way. Besides, I’ve never really been to shopping street before,”

I looked at Zach carefully and looked his face over for any sign of falsehood. Shopping street was one of the most popular spots in town for children, teens, and adults alike. It was so popular that even a formerly almost friendless introvert like me liked it. And now in front of me was someone who had never been there before.

“Okay then,” I hid my smile. I got to show someone around shopping street today, lucky me. 

Uncle Nick’s storage, yes that was the real name of the shop, was on a part of town called shopping street. It was a pedestrian street with no cars or trams, lined on either side with shops and restaurants with apartments above. Two lines of trees on either side of the road gave some greenery and shade. And overlooking it all was an old clock tower at the end of the street. I was pretty sure that you could get up there and see the whole street from up there, but I’d never tried to go up there. 

There was also a tiny amusement park operated by the city right next to the street behind the row of buildings. It only had a small handful of rides and it was usually pretty empty on most days. I honestly had no clue how it was still open. 

As or Uncle Nick’s storage, it right at the entrance of the shopping street. It was early afternoon on a Friday and the foot traffic was at its worse. We were lucky that the school was close to the street in the first place or we would have never made it here with the painting.

“Uncle Nick?” I called as Zach held the door open for me and I walked in with the painting in my arms. “It’s me Rita,”

“Oh, Good aftenoo…” Uncle Nick froze mid-word as he spotted Zach. Or maybe he had spotted the Painting. It was kind of hard to tell since the painting was blocking my sight of him.

I still knew the man well enough to guess what he looked like though. A mane of white hair on a round wrinkled face. A pair of old spectacles hanging off slightly pointy ears covering his blue eyes. I was ready to bet money that he was wearing some sort of tweed suit too. 

“Hello Rita, who is this?” Oh so he noticed Zach first. 

“This is Zach. He’s the one who made this painting that I want to put in the vault,” I told him while slightly shaking the painting for emphasis. 

“I see. Right this way then,” He said as he motioned for us to follow him downstairs. Zach helped me carry the painting down two flights of stairs until we were on the second of four basement levels.  
“Here we are Vault 204,” He said as we stopped in front of a metal wall with a rotating vault handle in front of him.

“You know when you said vault, I wasn’t expecting an actual vault,” Uncle Nick chuckled at Zach’s words as the old man put in the combination before giving the handle a spin. Once he was done, he stepped aside and let me walk into the vault.

Despite the whole vault aesthetic, we didn’t really keep anything valuable down here. We just used it as extra storage. Case and point, most of the space in here was taken up by bland blue colored storage boxes. And If I had to bet, I would guess that more than half of them were filled with either Christmas or Halloween decorations.

Speaking of, we were going to need to come back here soon anyway to start getting out the Halloween stuff. My parents started decorating the second the month part of the date read 10. And those decorations stayed up until at least a week after Halloween.

I set the painting down on top of one of the many blue containers. I quickly checked to see what was written on the side to make sure that I hadn’t put the painting on top of Christmas stuff.

Yep there it was the word ‘Halloween’ written in black marker.

“I think we’re done here,” I told Zach and Uncle Nick.

“Okay then, let’s head back up then,” Uncle Nick led us back up the stairs as Zach looked around.

“This place is cool,” He said as we reached the first floor.

“What can I say, I know my aesthetics,” Uncle Nick laughed. We gave him our goodbyes and walked out into the shopping street.

“So what now?” Zach asked as the sun hung overhead. “It’s still pretty early and I don’t have to be home for a while,”

“Well you’ve never been around the shopping street right?” I asked as Zach nodded. “Why don’t I show you around a bit?”

“Sure, lead the way,”

“Well first off is the pharmacy,” I said as I pointed at the store right after Uncle Nick’s storage. “It sells medicine over the counter medicine for surprisingly low prices. I actually bought some stuff for headaches from there a few weeks ago,”

“Isn’t it illegal to see stuff like that to teenagers though?” Zach brought up a good point which I then ignored in favor of pointing out the next store.

“And over on the other side of the store is the metal worker. I’m pretty sure the guy has his own forge somewhere on the outskirts of town. He’s the guy you want to see if you want some custom made metal stuff. My parents actually have a set of knives and forks with our names on them custom made by him,”

“That’s kind of cool. Does he sell…?”

“Swords?” I guessed giving him a knowing smile. “Officially no, but I’ve heard rumors that if he likes you enough and trusts you to not do something stupid, he’ll sell you decorative weapons,” I explained before crossing my arms. “And by ‘rumors’ I mean that the sword on our wall came from somewhere and I’m betting that it’s one of his,”

Speaking of weapons though… Lamia’s fangs were a pretty handy set of daggers but they were kind of weak. Could I get the blacksmith to sell me something better?

A question that would have to be saved for another day. For now I had to show Zach around more of the shopping street.

I led him around a bit more, showing him the movie theater, some of the better restaurants and of course the two-floor bookstore with gaming center in the basement that I came to every time I went to the shopping street.

“Hey mind if we stop here for a bit?” I looked back at Zach who was standing next to the… ice cream shop.

My mind flashed back to Lamia’s stats… yeah still weird to think about, and the big letters that said weakness under the snowflake. I hadn’t eaten any ice cream or other sort of super cold food since getting my Persona…

“Sure why not. I’ll wait for you out here,” I told him as I walked over and sat down at one of the outdoor tables outside of the store.

“You don’t want any?” Zach frowned as he stood in front of the door.

“Nah, I’ll just wait for you here. It’s not like ice cream takes long to make anyway,” I explained as Zach shrugged and reassured me that he’d be quick and walked in.

I pulled out my phone and checked the time. I still had some time until I really needed to head home. I could spend a bit more time around here…

I glanced up and groaned. I had the perfect opportunity to use the clock tower as an actual clock and I missed it.

Zach walked out a minute later with a milkshake in his hand.

“Are you sure you don’t want one? I don’t mind waiting outside while you get yours,” He offered as I shook my head no.

“It’s nice of you to offer, but I’m not just not in the mood for ice cream,” I got to my feet and started walking towards the clock tower, motioning him to follow me.

We walked past the ice cream shop and made it one step when I glanced up at the clock tower. I saw a small flash come from near the top when suddenly felt the muscles in my leg give out. I blinked as the world went sideways and I started falling.

“Whoa,” I stopped and felt someone’s arm grabbing onto me. “Are you okay?” I looked up and saw Zach holding me up.

“I don’t know,” I told him honestly. “Help me stand,”

I used Zach as a support to help me steady myself. It was working fine with the first leg but as soon as the other hit the ground.

“And there it is again,” My leg wobbled again as I put my weight on it. It was like the muscle strength was just gone. “Give me a bit?”

“Sure, take as long as you need,” Zach shifted so that I could lean on him. I waited a little while, testing my leg a few times until it started working again.

“Well that was weird,” I muttered when I noticed something white on the ground. It was Zach’s milkshake, fallen on its side and with its contents spilled all over the floor. “Oh, sorry,”

“I don’t think you get to blame yourself for this one,” Zach pointed out as he slowly let me go, ready to catch me again if my leg started failing again. He looked at my leg and narrowed his eyes. “You have something on you,”

I looked down and spotted a bit of… was that ice? I bent down and flicked the ice off me as alarm bells started going off in my head. 

“You know, it might be a good idea if I head home now,” I said as I subtly moved so that Zach was between me and the clock tower. A bit callous for sure but he wasn’t the one with the video-game style elemental weakness to ice.

“You going to need any help getting there?” He asked as visions of my mom getting the wrong idea flooded my mind.

“You can come along but please stay outside the building once we get there,” I sighed. “If my mom catches me within 20 feet of any boy besides Robby she’ll never stop bugging me about it,” 

“Bugging you how?’ He asked as we started making our way back to my apartment building.


	10. Case 3 part 2

I looked out of the car window as we approached shopping street. My parents hadn’t questioned where I suddenly got a painting from and agreed to take me to pick it up. I had also ended up agreeing to help them load up the car with the Halloween decorations though, so that was going to be not fun.

I guess it was worth it though, I would hate to just leave Zach’s painting in a vault somewhere. Sure it was a pretty safe place to leave it with its bare metal walls and sterile environment, but somehow it still felt wrong.

“Here we are,” My mom said as we came upon the multi-story parking lot close to shopping street. I looked outside and smiled at the thing. Despite the mundane nature of the structure, the city had gone out of its way to make it fit in with the rest of the buildings around it, painting it in natural colors and covering one of its sides with a mural.

I never got tired of looking at the mural whenever we parked in here. It was a bird’s eye view of the city, or at least how the city had been years ago. I was pretty sure that the only building I could recognize that was still around was the clock tower.

…Oh right, the clock tower. I was going to have to be careful to avoid it. Because snipers shooting with magic ice to exploit my elemental weakness was a thing I just had to deal with now.

I got out of the car and stretched my leg out. It hadn’t acted up since I saw that flash in the clock tower, which only furthered my suspicions. At least Zach had done me the kindness of leaving me at the entrance of the apartment and away from my mom.

I was not having my first non-Robby friend scared away by an overeager mother grilling him on every part of his life like he’s a hamburger at a barbeque. No, best to keep my parents and Zach as separate as possible.

“Oh hey Rita,”

“Hi Zach,”

I froze and looked back as I saw Zach standing in the middle of the parking complex. He was standing in front of an older man who looked a lot like Zach who was getting something out from the back seat of their car.

“Rita, who is this?”

I jumped as my mom almost teleported behind me. I gulped as my brain shut down.

I slowly turned to mom and tried to form words.

“This… friend. Name Zach,” I lifted my arm up so that my arm was pointing to Zach. I was also pretty sure that my arm was shaking like crazy but that was probably just my imagination.

“Hi there Mrs.… Now that I think about it, you never told me your last name Rita,” Zach smiled as my Mom gave me an intrigued look that I didn’t like.

The shaking got worse. 

“Oh you can just call me Mrs. Margy,” She said as dad walked up to us. 

“Hey guys why are you all still standing around here?” Dad said as he walked back towards us.

“Oh it looks like we found one of Rita’s… ‘friends’ from school,” My mom said, putting a strange emphasis on the word ‘friend’ that I hated already.

“Nice to meet you sir, are you guys here to pick up my painting?” He asked as my parents looked at each other. I hadn’t told them how I got the painting after all.

“You’re painting?” Dad asked which I took as my cue to interject.

“Zach’s an artist. He’s the one who painted the art that we’re going to Uncle Nick’s to pick up,” I explained as I looked back at him. “So that’s us, but what are you doing here? You went from never having gone to shopping street before to going two days in a row,”

“Yeah about that,” He chuckled nervously and looked to the side as the older man walked forward with a stack of painting shaped containers under his arm.

“Alright, I have them here,” He said before looking at us. He looked like a cross of Zach’s face with his Aunt Sherry’s hair color. Unlike Zach who still had his ‘hair-over-one-eye thing, his hair was cut short. He was also freakishly tall, and with a good bit of muscle. The contrast with this son could not have been more extreme. “So are you going to introduce me?”

“Oh dad this is my ‘friend’ from school Rita. She’s the one who I gave the painting to and the one who showed me the vault place,” Zach explained, also putting a weird emphasis on the word ‘friend’ that I didn’t hate in the same way I hated the one my mom used.

“Got it you’re girlfriend,” His dad said as he shuffled paintings under hi… what did he say?

“Dad, for the last time,” Zach protested, his face lit up like a tomato. “She’s my friend, not my girlfriend,”

“See,” His father shrugged as he looked down at his son. “You keep saying that and for some reason you keep expecting me to believe you,”

He used his free hand to shuffle Zach’s hair as my own dad burst out laughing. I just covered my face, feeling the heat and trying not to think about how red it probably was. It was a good thing lamia had fire resistance, or I was pretty sure I would have burst into flames by that point.

“Why are you like this?” Zach groaned.

“Probably because you keep filling his house with so many paintings that you’re about to buy an actual vault to store them all in?” I said from behind my hands still covering my face.

“So,” Zach’s dad said as he smirked at his son. “So you decided to got a girlfriend smarter than you,”

I felt myself getting redder as the adults laughed and started walking down to the entrance of the parking lot.

Zach and I just stood next to each other, neither of us able to look the other in the eye.

“Want to just move on and pretend that this never happened?” I muttered while starring straight at the floor.

“Please,” I heard Zach mutter too. “And I’m sorry for… him,”

“Is he always like… that?”

“Yes,”

“Then you have nothing to apologize for,” I told him as we started walking down the ramp to meet up with our families.

We met up with them pretty quickly and soon the conversation turned to how the two of us had met. Zach had explained about his Aunt recommending him Fangs over Hearts and then I told everyone about how he had seen me reading it during lunch. After that we had ended up telling them about how I had brought Zach to shopping street the first time. 

“Oh, that reminds me,” Zach said as he glanced downwards. “Is your leg doing better?”

“What happened to your leg Rita?” My mom asked as I felt her grip on my shoulders. I knew that she meant it as a gesture of affection, but at the moment her hands felt like iron clamps.

“Oh I had a cramp in my leg while we were walking around,” I glanced at Zach, Our eyes met and I gave him a quick look that hopefully only he saw. “We had to stop after that and he helped me home. My leg’s been fine since then though, so I’m pretty sure that it won’t happen again,”

“Are you sure you’re alright Rita?” My dad asked as we reached Uncle Nick’s storage.

“I’ll be fine. I haven’t felt anything weird in my le, and I think it’ll stay that way,” As long as I don’t get within sniping range of the clock tower, but I didn’t say that part out loud.

We entered the store and Uncle Nick came up to greet us. A quick explanation later, and he was leading Zach and his dad down to one of the smaller vaults on the third basement that they could use to store Zach’s paintings.

My parents and I waited upstairs while the other three were down there.

“So…” My mom walked up so that she was standing on my right. “Anything you want to say?” 

“Not a thing,” I said while looking straight ahead at the wall. I knew what my mom wanted me to say and I wasn’t going to give in that easily.

“Nothing at all?” She grinned.

“Nothing at all,” I repeated.

“Oh leave the girl alone Margy,” My dad cut in watching both of us. 

“Alright then, fine. You two take this at your own pace,” I groaned as my mom put her hand on my shoulder. “Just… well I’m sure you already know where we stand on this,”

“Your stories have been pretty clear,” I told her as we heard people walking back up the stairs. Considering that the basement only had one entrance, I was pretty sure that there were only three people it could be.

Uncle Nick, Zach and Zach’s dad walked out a second later, proving me right.

“Well, that’s your vault taken care of. I suppose you want me to take you to your vault now?” Uncle nick asked my dad.

“Yeah, figured we might as well start taking out the Halloween decorations early this year since we’re already here collecting this painting of Rita’s,” My dad explained as Zach’s raised an eyebrow.

“I’m not doing anything for the rest of the day, want any help with that?” He offered. “I can help you out a bit while Rita shows Zach the rest of shopping street,”

“Good idea,” My dad nodded and before I knew it, Zach and I were standing outside the store.

“What just happened?” I asked.

“I… I think our parents just head-canoned us into a relationship and then set us up on a… date,” He gulped.

“This would actually be really sweet if we were actually dating,” I pointed out as I looked down the street. Would the sniper on the clock tower still be there? If they were then this was about to get real complicated real quick. “Why don’t you lead this time?”

I walked carefully behind Zach, making sure to keep him between me and the clock tower at all times. I changed the rules this time around. Instead of taking the lead and pointing out all the interesting shops, I let him choose where he wanted to stop with me only stepping in if I felt like he missed something to vital to skip on accident.

I only had to do it twice though. The first time for a smoothie stand that sold special drinks on Sundays and a particularly famous statue of the town’s founder that a lot of people used as a meetup point.

“And that’s almost all of shopping street,” I told him as we came to the last shop on the street before reaching the clock tower. A small family-owned restaurant that sold some pretty good barbeque. “So what do you think?”

“I think I see Kenny serving some people food over there,” He pointed over to the restaurant and what did you know, Kenny was indeed there serving a couple seated outside a plate of ribs.

“So it is,” I told him as Robby walked out of the door carrying a serving tray too. I waited for him to finish setting down the man’s food and walking away before intercepting him. “Table for five please,”

He glanced back at us and smiled.

“Oh hey Rita, and you must be Zach. What are you two doing here?”

“Long story I’ll tell you on Monday,” I told him. “What about you, since when do you have a part time job?”

“Since yesterday, it’s only for the weekend since two of the servers were unavailable. It was really weird, they just sort of collapsed,” He explained. “The five of us were nearby when it happened so we offered to take their place,”

So it wasn’t just me then. This problem just got worse. And instead of some out of the way church, now the problem was in the middle of the most crowded parts of the city.   
“Love to talk to you guys but I got to get back to work,” Robby said as he walked away from us.

“We should head back too,” I told Zach as I turned around and started walking back down the street.

I made sure to walk slowly and under the trees as much as I could. My leg going weak like that once was already pretty weird… but twice in a row was probably just a bit too suspicious. Now that I thought about it, I got hit in the knee and lost all muscle control in my leg, what if it had hit higher?

I gulped as I realized just how lucky I might have been.

We made it halfway down the street when someone fell. It was a biker looking guy who suddenly collapsed. I was pretty sure that I had heard the zap of lighting too.

“Dude are you okay?” His friend said as he helped him up.

“Ugh, yeah,” He said as Zach and I kept walking. “Man someone get the number on that lightning strike that…” He faded out as Zach and I got too far away to hear him.

About an hour later I stood in my room looking at my new painting hanging on my bedroom wall. We also apparently had an invite to a barbeque that Zach’s dad was having in two weeks. Plenty of time to deal with this.

I looked away from the painting to my desk. I pulled the desk drawer open to reveal a pair of black and red goggles.

“Since when is this my life?” I asked myself as I put the goggles on. “I mean, I’m a teenager. I shouldn’t be protecting the town from supernatural threats,”

I looked myself in the mirror and bowed my head in defeat.

“But if not me… then who?”


	11. Case 3 part 3

I groaned as I touched what should have been empty air and felt a solid wall.

I wasn’t sure what it said about me, but my first instinct was to cheat. Instead of walking down the whole of shopping street, wouldn’t it be faster to just walk into the clock tower from the back?

The answer was yes, and it would have worked if the backdoors of the clock tower weren’t all blocked off with some sort of force field. Just to make it worse, a second later a wireframe person walked past me and through the door with no problem.

I backed off and sighed. The last thing I wanted was to just walk down the almost-empty underneath version of shopping street.

At the very least I had confirmed that I didn’t have to worry about collateral damage. Despite what I had done to the underneath version of the church, it was still fine in the normal world.

I had also confirmed that the wireframe did in fact represent people in the normal world. Either that or the two wireframes I found in the living after entering the world underneath via the small TV in my room had been a strange coincidence.

“Maybe some of the side entrances?” I asked myself as I walked over to one of the many alleys that let you enter shopping street. I carefully walked forward with my hand outstretched and growled when my fingers met another stupid force field.

I tried two more alleys until I was forced to accept the unacceptable, I was going to have to walk down a mostly deserted shopping street in full view of the sniper.

I walked back to the entrance of shopping street and looked at the trees blocking my view of the clock tower. Never thought I would find myself being so thankful for them. Whoever had had the idea to plant some must have been some sort of genius.

…Okay so maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but the point still stood that these large, sturdy, cloth-covered moving trees were going to be the perfect co… 

I Crushed Lama’s card and had her grab me and drag me back as one of the trees swung down its branch and smashed the road where I had been standing.

“First the bees and now the trees?” I landed on the ground and carefully watched the three approaching trees. They were skinnier than the rest of the trees, with almost bare branches and a trunk covered in red robes. “What’s next the… Keys?”

I cringed at my own pathetic attempt at a joke as Lamia facepalmed. A fitting act for an expression of my own… soul?

No, now was not the time to overthink about the metaphysical aspects of my magic snake powers. Right now was burny-slashy time.

“Burn Lamia,” I said as my other self came forward and released an agi at the closest tree. The flames impacted the tree, rolling over it as the other trees slowly backed away from it.

Now you would think that an old, dry-looking tree covered in flammable cloth would be weak to fire. I would think the same.

However in this case we would both be wrong. The flames subsided leaving a slightly brunt tree that was still coming right for me. Once the fires were gone, the other two trees started advancing too.

I quickly scanned them with the goggles just to be sure. And yeah they had an empty box under the flame icon. I wasn’t going to risk getting in close to use lamia’s fangs, so I stayed back.

I looked around the street, there had to be something here that I could use.

My eyes passed over the blacksmith’s shop and I suddenly felt really bad about this.

“Come, Persona,” I brought forth Lamia as she charged forward and smashed down the front door with a shoulder tackle. Both of covered our ears as the alarm blared.

“There has to be a way to get rid of that,” I growled despite not being able to even hear myself. I quickly spotted the speaker creating the noise and had Lamia smack it with her tail.

I let go of my ears as Lamia rushed forward and grabbed the first heavy metal object that she came across.

I looked back at the trees as Lamia emerged from the store and threw the metal baseball bat with all she had.

The bat flew through the air spinning so fast that it turned into a circle of gray. The metal struck the tree, and bounced off.

“So not that then,” I grimaced as I scanned the tree again. This time the block under a symbol that kind of looked like a diagonal arrow was filled in. The word underneath read ‘immune’. 

Was that physical attacks? In that case what were the arrow and diagonal line before it?

I looked back at Lamia’s own stats and went to her attacks. In particular,I reread Blight Fang.

‘Deals light slashing damage with a chance to poison.’

When I had read it the first time, I had guessed that ‘slashing’ was just a fancy way to say physical, but now I wasn’t sure. I had to find out.

I ran out of the store and summoned Lamia as the trees turned towards me. I saw the three trees start to wave their branches around before pulling them back.

I reached the outside of one of the smaller restaurants as Lamia flipped a table over. I dove behind it for cover as Lamia kept moving, circling around the trees.

I watched through her eyes as the three trees unleashed a hail of green needles from their leaves. The needles burrowed into the table, digging into the thick plastic and leaving it looking like a pincushion.

Lamia approached as the trees slowly turned to her. Her claws filled with poison light as she slashed through the closest tree. Its trunk went rigid, staying in place as the top branches dropped to the side.

I scanned the tree again and this time I saw that magic word, weak. This time it was under the diagonal line icon. I guess that it sort of looked like the path of a sword slash if you kind of squinted at it funny. 

Well, here I was with three slow-moving monsters weak to knives and a pair of big old knives right here. I was going to have to be fast about this.

I waited for the two still moving trees to let loose another round of green needles. I smirked as the needles hit the table. With how long it took for the trees to reload, I had plenty of time.

As soon as the hail of needle fire ended, I rushed out from cover and ran to the trees with Lamia's fangs out and ready.

I ran past the first one, cutting into the cloth covered trunk before reaching the second one. I brought down both fangs in a crossed slash before spotting the third tree start to recover.

"Oh no you don't," I growled as I jumped at the last tree and cut it where Lamia had already slashed.

The cut was a disappointing brown color instead of the purple that I had hoped for, but the tree fell back stunned, so I'd take what I could get.

I looked back at the three trees for a second. They were kind if cut up but in otherwise fine shape. If I really wanted to take care of them, it was going to take a while.

A while that I did not have to spend. I turned back around and ran forward, taking advantage of the tree's downed state to put as much distance between me and them as I could.

I narrowed my eyes at the surrounding trees as I ran down the street, making sure to check for red cloth. I only spotted a few and I made sure to land a solid cut on each one I saw. After the first few times, I didn't even look back to check that the trees were stunned.

I slashed at one last cloth-covered tree before reaching the end of the tree cover. From here on I would have nothing to keep me out of sight of the clock tower sniper. I had to think of a way to advance my way up without getting shot. Fortunately,I had plenty of time to stay here and figure out how I could…

I looked back at the tree-covered part of the street and saw the 12 or so clothed trees that I had cut up slowly approaching me.

I looked between the slowly advancing foliage behind me and the bare skies in front of me and only saw both sides of a particularly annoying mousetrap.

“Squeak, squeak,” I deadpanned before looking around for anything that I could use for cover. There weren’t that many more restaurants, so using outdoor tables for cover was out for most of the run. Had to think of someone else…

The force field started at the start of the alley…

I made a break for it, running to the closest alleyway. I kept my eye on the clock tower as I ran, waiting for the flash that I had seen before.

…

There it was.

I jumped into the alley as I saw a white needle flash through the air and hit my leg. I winced as I felt a sharp pain in my leg and all of the muscles going numb. My momentum kept me going until I landed behind cover in the alley.

Just like before, it was only my leg that had been hit, so the rest of my body was still working correctly. I dragged myself a bit deeper into the alley and looked over at my leg.

Instead of the fleck of ice that I had been expecting, the whole area around my knee had been covered in ice. I tried to summon Lamia, only for no card to come to my hand.

My slashes didn’t do much to the trees, and despite my leg being covered in ice, this hurt way less than the lightning from my first fight. Maybe being ‘weak’ to something meant that you got immobilized when it hit you? I mean it would make sense with everything so far and what was that light?

I looked up from my leg and saw a shining light start to come from the clock tower. Now that I looked at the light again… was it shrinking? 

It was, the light was narrowing and getting brighter. After about a few seconds it had concentrated into a narrow laser beam that hurt a little to look at.

I couldn’t help but notice that the beam was running down the same path as the white needle that had hit me. Ice to immobilize and then hit with a laser beam? It seemed like a bit too much set up for little payoff. If I hadn’t jumped when I did, I’d just be laying there getting annoyed.

“Maybe there was something else to it?” I asked myself aloud.

And that was when the world went white.

I shut my eyes and put my arm up over my face as a torrent of light rained down, following the path of the laser.

The laser wasn’t the attack, it was the reticle for the real attack.

The light gave way and an instant later, the ice around my leg vanished.

I got to my feet and got as close to the entrance of the alley as I dared. I peered at the spot where the light had hit the ground.

It had left a circular scorch mark big enough for me to curl up in. There was still steam coming off the ground and the very center of it looked a little… liquid.

Now call me crazy, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t about to survive against anything capable of melting concrete.

But on the other hand, I couldn’t just stay here and wait for the trees to come for me. In fact, how close were they anyway? I poked my head out to look back at the moving forest.

Or maybe not so moving. It looked like all the monster trees had stopped at the edge of the real trees. Well stopped moving forward, it looked like they were spreading out to block off the whole street. And I didn’t even have to look behind me to know that there was a force field blocking me off from behind.

But I couldn’t just run out and get fried like the street in front of me…

Why had they shot at the street? All they needed to do was move the laser to the left a bit and it would have cut through the house and hit me. In fact they knew where I was now, but they still weren’t firing…

What if it was automatic? Firing the needle at anything moving around in range and then firing the laser exactly where the needle had hit?

But if it shot at anything that moved then why did it only fire on me and that biker guy earlier?

The angel had said that her job was to accept penance from ‘persona users’. Users plural. There were others like me out there… I hadn’t thought about that until now. Was the biker guy a persona user like me?

My eyebrow twitched.

Then where the heck was he? Why was I dealing with this on my own? Ugh, I could figure that out later. For now, I had a problem to solve. If the sniper only shot at persona users… would it fire on personas and magic in general?

I backed away from the alley opening and summoned Lamia.

“Okay so how about this?” I asked the world as Lamia prepared an agi in her hand. With a wave, the fireball went forward towards the tree line as slowly as possible. The flames only traveled a little bit before getting pierced by a white needle.

Right on cue, the light started shining again. I waited for it to get halfway through its charge before firing another agi spell in a different direction.

Despite the new source of magic fire cruising along at a turtle’s pace, the laser kept concentrating on the where the first needle had fired.

Perfect.

I rushed out of my cover and ran towards the next alleyway, a tiny little place between the book store and a pharmacy. I reached it just as the laser fired and filled the whole street with light again.

I had it figured it out now. I waited a few seconds before summoning Lamia and letting loose another agi into the street. The sniper took the bait just like the first time and the second the light appeared, I made a break for it.

I was pretty sure I ran faster than I had ever run my entire life. My feet felt like I was slamming them on stone, my legs burned like someone had poured hot oil inside, and my lungs gasped for breath.

But when I stopped, I stopped in front of the clock tower. 

“Made it!” I huffed as I walked under the arched entryway into the large tunnel that went right through the tower’s base. Despite my best attempt, I sat down on the ground with my back to the wall. Now all I needed to do was make it to the top of the tower.

From what I had heard, the entrance to the tower was around halfway into the tunnel on the left side. All I had to do was go through that door and make my way through the clock tower.

The clock tower that Robby had described as a maze of narrow corridors with subpar lighting. The one that he admitted that he would totally gotten lost in if he hadn’t followed a tour guide. The same tower that was now probably filled with monsters defending the sniper…

I got up, dusted myself off, walked back outside of the tower and summoned Lamia. We both stayed silent as she picked me up in her arms and carried me up to the top of the tower.

We reached the area right below the clock itself when I saw it. It was a large cannon with five barrels set to rotate. The barrels themselves were red, blueish-white, green, yellow, and gray. It had two… ‘legs’? They were metal parts that on either side of the cannon that braced it. Wasn’t sure if there was a name for them.

Other than that it was a pretty normal looking weapon.

Considering what I had already seen, it felt like a bit of a disappointment to be honest.

Lamia set me down next to the cannon and I slowly held a finger out until I was touching it. I tapped it once before flinching my hand away, expecting something, anything, to happen.

No, nothing.

I quickly glanced around the room, just to be sure. The whole room under the clock was empty aside from me and the cannon. The mess of spinning gears and poles overhead were just as empty. The cannon must have been automatic, because not only was there no one around to operate it, there weren’t any sort of controls or trigger.

“Looks like I was right about it being automatic,” I said to myself as I looked the cannon over. I had managed to get up here now all I had to do was figure out how to destroy this thing.

Now how exactly was I going to do that? I had two big knives but I wasn’t sure what that would do against something like this. Just to be sure I took them out and sliced at it a few times.

All I did was tire myself out.

Next I brought out Lamia and her wave a Rakunda on this thing, followed by an Agi and a blight fang. Neither of the attacks did any noticeable damage but at least the curse worked.

Maybe I could push this thing off the building? The section of fence that would have kept it from falling off had been removed to make room for it, might as well take advantage of that. 

I summoned Lamia again, rolled up my sleeves and had both of us push it from the back with all the strength we had. As it turned out, that proved to be not a lot.

“Okay that’s not going to work,” I dismissed Lamia and let my arms rest for a second. I sat back down with my back to the cannon this time. “What else can I do?”

I looked back up to the gears above. All of those gears… all of those heavy gears.

“That’ll work,” I said as I got to my feet and summoned Lamia. “Burn it all Lamia!”

The snake me coiled back as she gathered fire in her hands. I took the chance to check her stats as she let loose a rain of agis on the metal support beams keeping the clock above from falling on our heads.

It looked like the yellow circle was maybe some sort of magic meter. As the spells went flying, the yellow in the center got smaller and the pulsing got weaker. By the time my work was done, it was almost empty.

Lamia picked me up and carried me away from the tower as the support beams started to bend. One last agi and soon the clock was coming down. I made sure that some of the gears fell on and crushed the cannon before looking away.

Man, I really hoped that I was right about the world underneath not reflecting on the world above or I just might have burned down the most iconic building in the city. 

Case 3 end


	12. Case 4 part 1

As it turned out, I had nothing to worry about. When I woke up the next morning, there was no news report of the clock tower and half of shopping street burning to the ground. In other news, I finally had ended up going to Zach’s house for that barbeque. It was nice, my parents spent most of the time in the backyard talking to other adults while Zach showed me his vast collection of paintings.

I now understood his father’s pain. Even with the batch that he had placed in one of Uncle Nick’s vaults, he still had way too many.

What I was saying was that I had left his house with a second painting. This time it was a landscape of a lone cabin next to a lake under a full moon. It was nice enough that my parents had decided to just put it right in the living room.

It fit in well with the Halloween decorations that slowly took over the house over the course of the next three weeks. I had plenty of time to help set up too. Mostly because I had gone three weeks without any notable incidents. No cannons attacking around the city, no strange rumors, nothing that would require Lamia at all.

Well, I had used her a few times to hang up some stuff that was too high to reach otherwise, but I was pretty sure that didn’t count.

Still, I had felt a little uneasy. Just because things had stopped for now didn’t mean that they would stop forever.

I wasn’t sure when I had started doing it, but by the end of the third week I always made sure to have my goggles on me at all times.

I leaned back in my chair as I watched Zach paint. Normally I would take the opportunity that lunch provided to read, but I was between books at the moment. So instead here I was in the art room, passing time. It looked like he was making something with some darker colors. Fitting for Halloween.

“Did you hear that we apparently have a new student?” He asked as he put some more paint on the canvas.

“No, who?” I tilted my head to the side. We didn’t get a lot of new students. Especially not this far into the fall

“Some girl in our year. Share have a homeroom with her,” He explained before narrowing his eyes at one particular part of the canvas. He put his finger over the spot before moving it over a bit to the right. A few seconds later he smiled and nodded his head. “Apparently she just moved into town,”

With that said, Zach went back to painting. We spent most of the rest of lunch in silence.

As Lunch ended and we got up to head back to class, a knock came from the door. Zach and I quickly glanced at each other before Zach shrugged his shoulders.

I pulled the door open as Robby burst into the art room.

“Rita, just who I needed to see. Your brain is full of dumb book nerd stuff right?” He blanked for a second before opening his mouth again.

“My brain is books yes,” I told him before he could start trying to fix what he said. My best guess was that one of his boys had used the wording and he had accidentally used it due to being in a hurry

“Okay good I need your help,” He glanced over at Zach and flinched back like he had just noticed that he was here. “Oh, hey Zach, you working on a new painting?”

“Pretty much. You want it this time? I’m going for a creepy Halloween thing again,”

Heh, called it.

“Maybe later, let me ask my dad about it,”

Fun thing about my parents, they liked making friends out of their friends. Robby’s parents had gotten the invite for the fall barbeque too and all three of them had ended up coming along

Zach’s dad made fast friends with Robby’s parents from what I hear, and Robby’s dad had spent a good while looking at the painting filled walls.

Honestly, a part of me wanted to tell Zach to just start selling his paintings. But that matter could wait for another day, for now I had another friend who needed me.

“So what do you need?”

“Okay so this is going to be a little complicated…” He glanced up at the clock on the wall. “One second thought, maybe it would be better to tell you after school,”

He quickly gave me some directions to visit after school and left for his next class. Zach and I followed after him and separated to our own classes.

When school ended, I didn’t bother looking for Robby. With how animated he looked earlier, he had probably gone off by himself to whatever it was that caught his attention. Instead I just looked up the direction he gave me on his phone and followed them to an old train station.

The station was a bit out of the way, just a bit too far from the rest of the city to justify walking to it as part of a commute. Maybe that was why it was closed down. Trains still passed through it, but they never stopped. Instead they stopped at the shiny new station built last year in the heart of the city.

The station itself was pretty standard, a pair of platforms inside a building with an overhead walkway connecting the two. The paint was peeling off the walls and I spotted several bird nests in the roof overhead.

I found Robby pretty easily once I got onto the platform. He was standing next to his boys right outside a locked metal door built into the wall. All of them were leaning in close to the door looking at something. Whatever it was, they were giving it all of their attention.

Just… all of their attention. To the point that they probably wouldn’t even notice someone walking up to them.

“So what did you need my nerd brain for?” I quickly asked as the group jumped.

“Don’t do that!” Robby yelled as they crashed into the door. I smirked before looking at whatever it was that that had fascinated them.

It was a green metal door with something… were these words carved in? They were, someone had taken a knife and scratched words into the door.

Roode hthta enred nunot tubas iereh t.

…Was this what they had been expecting me to figure out? Just what kind of books did Robby think I read anyway?

I glanced over at Robby who leaned in close to me and the letters.  
“Yeah I know it makes no sense,” He admitted before saying the words that I was worried about. “I thought that you would be able to figure it out,”

“Why exactly?” I demanded as he handed me a folded piece of paper. I undid the folds and looked at a simple sentence that made everything make sense.

“I figured that the clue would make more sense to you than it did for us,”

Well he wasn’t wrong, it hadn’t even taken me a second to figure it out with this.

‘Alice’s second adventure will lead the way’.

“Do you have any idea what it means?” Robby asked as he leaned next to the door.

“More than an idea, I think I know what we have to do. The second Alice book is called ‘Through the Looking-Glass’,”

“What does that have to do with anything?” One of his boys interrupted before I gave him a glare.

“It means,” I clicked my tongue at the interrupting party before continuing. “We have to use a looking glass, or as we modern people would call it, a mirror,”

“But the words don’t looked flipped or anything,” One of his other boys added

“No but I bet that if we wrote them backward we’d get something,” I explained as Kenny took out a pen and took the clue from me. He placed the clue on the door and started writing.

T herei sabut tonun derne athth edoor.

“There is a button underneath the door,” I read aloud before glancing down. There indeed was a small opening between the door and the floor. “So which one of you guys is going to stick your hands down there and check to see if it’s there?”

“I’ll do it,” one of his other boys declared as he knelt down and started feeling around for a button. Good thing he was doing it instead of me to be honest. I probably would have put my hand down there and started screaming about something grabbing it to freak everyone out…

Maybe thoughts like that were why I had so few friends? Well, maybe best not to think about that at the moment. Instead I turned to Robby to ask him a question.

“So how did you guys…”

“My hand!”

We all jumped back away from the screaming only for the boy in question to start laughing.

“Don’t do that,” Robby said as he punched him in the shoulder. The boy kept laughing anyway but went back to searching for the button.

“Jerk, I wanted to do that,” I growled as I could feel the rest of the group looking at me. “So Robby, I was asking you how you ended up getting involved,”

“Oh, you see we found this old treasure map,” He pulled out another piece of paper from his pocket. “First the map led us to the Alice hint, then to this old key,” He reached into his pocket and took out an old iron key, big enough to need his entire hand to hold. “And then it led us to this door,"

“I think I found the button,” The boy interrupted as we heard a clicking sound from the door and it slowly started to swing outwards.

We all glanced at each other for a second before Robby took the first step forward, grabbing the door and pulling it open all the way before stepping inside.

Beyond the door was a pretty big storage closet. At least, that was what I was pretty sure it was. Despite its title, it was almost empty. Bare tiles covered the floor while bare concrete painted the walls. There was a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

I flipped the switch by the door a few times, but it refused to turn on. “Looks like it’s either going to be flashlights or the light outside,”

We all took out our phones and turned on the flashlights, sweeping the lights over the room.

It didn’t take long for all the lights to converge on the one item in the room.

At the far end leaning on the wall was a locker with a huge lock on it. We all slowly approached it, all of us checking back to door just in case. Or maybe that was just me. Three adventures in and I wasn’t going to take any more chances.

“Cross your fingers and keep the light on me,” Robby told us as he got the key out. We all kept the light on the locker as he slowly pushed the key in.

I could hear him gulp as he slowly turned the key and something clicked inside the locker. It swung open and we were blinded by a flash of light.

“What is that?” I demanded as I summoned Lamia’s card just in case. I was about to crush it to use her eyes when Robby’s voice cut through our panic.

“Calm down, there was a mirror in the locker,”

We all did as he said as we lowered the brightness on our flashlight apps to reveal the now open locker. Just like Robby had said, the inside of the locker was a mirror that had bounced back all of our light at us.

At the very bottom of the locker was a chest.

Like… a chest chest. A treasure chest made from red wood like something that you would see out of a video game.

I knelt down next to Robby as he crouched down to look at it.

“So what kind of treasure is supposed to be in here anyway?”

“No idea, I figured that learning would be part of the fun,” He admitted before undoing the latch and throwing the top open.

The inside was empty except for a single note.

Robby just starred at the bare bottom and made croaking noises as I reached in and took the note. I glanced up at the rest of his boys who were looking at me with expectant faces.

“Uhm…” Okay how to put this gently. Maybe I should just read the note aloud. “The contents of this chest have already been claimed by the great Zitili, urban explorer extraordinaire. To those who followed my trail and tail, I wish you my condolences. If it makes it any better you… oh my god she didn’t,”

“Didn’t so what?” Robby asked as he slowly got to his feet. I choked back my amazement at this person’s audacity.

“If it makes it any better you can just say that the real treasure was the friends you made along the way,” I finished as the rest of the room fell silent.

“Let’s… let’s all just go home for the day gang,” Robby broke the silence as the rest of his boys gave murmurs of agreement.

I watched as one by one they all slowly shuffled out of the room, finally leaving me alone in the empty closet.

“This was not how I thought that day would go,” I told myself as I went back to the chest and looked it. It was a pretty nice chest, maybe I could take it home with me? Put some of my stuff in it.

I had a little adventure, I got to use my vast knowledge of useless trivia for something, and I even got a cool treasure chest out of it. I would say that going on this little trip was worth it.

I glanced up in the mirror to smirk at myself when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. I glanced back at the far wall and then looked back at the mirror before letting out a frustrated sigh.

Without a word, I held my finger in front of the mirror before quickly swiping it across the surface.

It sunk in, because of course it did.

Because there in the reflection of the room there was a second door leading out that didn’t exist in the real world, because of there was.

And it looked like my new name for the day was going to be Alice, because of course it was going to be.

“Hey Rita?” I glanced back at the door to see Robby standing at the entrance. I couldn’t see his face in the shadows. “Are you okay? Why are you still in here?”

“Having a bit of trouble getting this chest out of here,” I lied as I started tugging at the chest again.

I managed to pull it free of the locker when Robby came and up and started helping me pull.

I glanced back at the mirror one more time before we left. I was going to have to come back here later.


	14. Case 4 part 2

I stood in front of the entrance of what I had started calling the Alice room and glanced around one last time. Just to make sure that I was alone on the platform. I needed to check because unlike my last few misadventures, I was starting from the world above instead of the one underneath.

I had tried getting into the locker via the world underneath… only to find that the Alice room didn't even exist there. It was so far the only part of the world above that wasn't mirrored and I would be lying if that wasn't freaking me out.

I started keeling down when I eyed the underside of the door.

I had thought about doing it as a joke, but now that I knew something was up… I summoned Lamia's card and watched as she reached underneath the door.

A stray thought crossed my head as Lamia flinched back opened her mouth for a voiceless scream.

It wasn't as funny without anyone else around to scare. Lamia reached back down and clicked the button, opening the door and letting me in.

The room was just as we left it, if a bit brighter. An upside of coming here early on a weekend instead of afterschool.

I walked up to the locker and gulped as I pulled it open, Lamia right behind me ready to pull me back if needed.

The locker was empty except for the mirror, the chest now decorating my room. I looked into the mirror and caught sight of the door that didn't exist on this side.

Instead of just crossing over like an idiot, I had Lamia go in first.

My other-self went into the mirror as I felt a strange sensation that I had felt only once before. Back when I had first gotten Lamia, I had done a few tests with her. Including sending her out to see how far away from me she could be.

I hadn't gotten an answer, instead when she got really far away, I started feeling lightheaded and a little dizzy. I pushed her just a bit further away only for me to start seeing black spots in my eyes.

I called back Lamia and the feeling went away.

I learned that day that I could have lamia away from me, but not super far away. And apparently the other side of the mirror counted. I dismissed Lamia back into me and stood in front of the mirror alone.

I took one last look at the mirror the other world beyond.

Did I really have to do this? It didn't look that dangerous, and it was so out of the way unlike the other incidents. I could just leave and never have to worry about it again…

But, I just knew. I just knew that if I let it alone, something bad would happen. Someone would fall in and my recon mission would turn into a rescue mission.

No, the safest thing for everyone was for me to go inside and figure out what was the deal with this thing.

I took a deep breath before pushing my arm into the mirror.

Despite the ripple around my arm like I had just pushed it into water, I didn't feel anything. I kept going and it felt like I was just moving through empty space.

I made it to the other side and looked around. The Alice room looked pretty much the same, except for the new door and the working light bulb overhead that lit up the room in full yellow light.

Before anything else, I pulled out my goggles, checking to see if there would be any change at all. There wasn't, but I still kept them on anyway.

Before going through the mystery door, I tried the door that led outside. I pushed it open and it didn't budge. I scrunched my face as I gave it a few more pushes, not feeling it give way.

I narrowed my eyes at the door and back away and looked down. There was no light coming from the bottom or the sides…

"Come Lamia," I summoned my persona and noted that she was solid instead of the vaguely see-through that she usually was in the world above. She slithered down to the bottom of the door and reached her hand underneath.

There was nothing there, it was a fake door. The only thing on the other side was a bare stone wall.

Well that's stupid. It was open when it was a reflection.

I looked at the other door and pushed it open, hoping for better luck.

Unlike the other one, it opened. In particular, it opened to a large room with bare stone tiles and bare stone walls. Off to the side there was a staircase built leading up to a door built into the wall.

In the very center of the room there was a panel covered pillar going up, and up, and up. I could barely even see the top of this thing. Of course with how close up I was, maybe it just looked bigger than it actually was?

What I could see was a series of walkways above that reached from one side of the room to the other, going through the pillar in the process.

"Well, time to cheat," I said aloud as I called forth Lamia's card and crushed it. She appeared behind me as I fell back into her arm and we started flying up.

We made it just halfway to the first walkway when the panels on the pillar opened up to reveal spears shooting out of the sides. I had lamia slow down just as the spears started to glow purple.

I felt a heavy weight on me like I was about to die and had Lamia fall back. The closer we got to the ground, the less the spears glowed.

Okay so maybe not that. If I couldn't go straight up, then I would have to take the stairs. I climbed up the stairs on the wall and looked ahead at the door in front of me.

I took a deep breath and hoped for the best as I pushed it open.

Well if I wanted proof that I wasn't in Kansas anymore this was it. I had emerged from the door into someplace sunny and apparently high up enough to have clouds at eye level. Ahead of me was a narrow stone walkway with stone walls boxing me in. At the end of that was what looked like a small floating castle. I glanced over the side of the wall and glanced down.

Yeah, the whole walkway and castle were floating in the sky over a vast mostly empty plain of green. Off in the distance I could make out the blue of the sea and if I squinted my eyes, I could see a small handful of buildings dotting the countryside.

And behind me? Behind me was a single door at the end of the walkway with nothing but empty sky behind it.

You know, maybe Kansas is the wrong comparison here. I was down the rabbit hole maybe? It would fit with the Alice motif at least.

I grumbled to myself about how weird this all was as I walked down the stone walkway towards the castle. As I got closer, I noticed that the walkway led into one of the towers instead of the base of the castle.

I reached the end of the caste and summoned Lamia. I had her go up and fly around the caste a bit to get a better look at it. She couldn't see the whole thing due to my range, but it was enough to make out the general shape.

The castle was shaped like a square, with a tall tower at each corner. There was no courtyard like there would be in a real castle, instead the whole thing was covered in a mostly flat stone roof. At the very center of the roof, there was a single part sticking out into the air. It looked like the size of a single room, so who knew what it was.

I called Lamia back to me and entered the first tower.

The room I entered looked like it took up the entire upper part of the area. It was a circular room with the top of a spiral staircase leading down at the far end of the room.

The floor was made of wood to contrast with the stone walls with wooden panel lining going up the sides.

At the dead center of the room, I saw a strange emblem on the floor. It looked like a fourth of a round shield, colored red and with a bird on it. I stepped over it and felt a low warmth coming from below.

I knelt down and touched the emblem. It was warm to the touch, not too hot, just nice and balmy. I moved my hand around a bit, trying to see if any part of it was warmer than the rest. It wasn't, the thing was all equally warm. However as soon as my hands left the emblem, the warmth went away.

"Weird," I mumbled to myself. "What does it mean?"

Instead of an actual answer, my question was met with a loud screech coming from above.

I threw my head up and spotted a shape falling towards me from above.

Lamia's card was in my hand in an instant. I flexed my hand and felt her grab me and pull me forward.

I heard the shape crash into the floor and looked back.

Standing on the floor was a large red bird with its talons puncturing the spot where I had been kneeling.

The bird looked back up at me, its golden feathers topping its head. It ruffled the feathers of its large red and gold peacock-like tail. The eyes on the tail started to glow before small flames started to appear in front of them.

I gulped as the bird screeched and flapped its wings forward.

The flames flew at me like they had been directed by the wings.

The world froze as my eyes scanned the flames in front of me. There was no cover, and Lamia wasn't fast enough to pull me out of the flames completely. Plus she would get hit too and the angle had taught me why that would be a bad idea.

The flames were kind of small, and while there wasn't enough space to move between them, if I moved in the right way, I would only get hit by one.

I gulped to myself. Time to find out what the word 'resist' in my stats meant.

I ran forward into the flames, covering my face with my arms.

I grunted as I ran into one of the fireballs and it exploded in my arms. I felt myself burn a little but it didn't hurt as much as it probably should have.

I kept running as Lamia's fangs appeared in my hands. The bird screeched and reared its head back. Its eyes wide and looking a little surprised. Its long neck also pulled it away from the range of my daggers.

That was fine.

I reached the bird and kept running, moving past it as I got in range of its tail.

I heard it screeching and saw its beak coming down at me out of the corner of my eye. It must have figured out what I wanted to do.

It was too late, I skidded to a stop in front of its tail and cut into the feathers.

It roared in fury as pillars of flame erupted from the ground around us. I barely felt the heat.

It stabbed its beak down at me and hit me right in the shoulder. Once again I barely felt it.

Things clicked into place as I looked the bird in the eye as it tried to dig its beak into my shoulder.

I quickly glanced at my status just to make sure. The green circle that represented my life was almost full.

"You don't have anything besides the fire do you?" The bird stopped its attempt at stabbing me and slowly turned its eye at me. "The flames are your only trick and now that you're up against someone who can tank them, you don't have anything else, do you?"

The bird shrunk back as I fought back a laugh. Elemental rock paper scissors was on my side for once.

The bird had the last laugh as it lurched its head up with me still on its beak. It twisted around a bit, sending me flying off its beak.

I went flying, going through one of the flame pillars before crashing onto the wooden floor. That the floors hurt more was all the extra proof I needed.

I scrambled to my feet and felt a familiar object in my hand.

"Cut them up Lamia," My persona came forth in a burst of blue, rushing forward through the air. I burst into a run along the ground.

The bird looked between the two of us, not sure which one to react to. It made up its mind as it turned towards me and the flames appeared in front of its eye feathers again.

I quickly noted that the feathers that I had wrecked weren't creating any flames. When it opened fire, there was going to be an entire section of its attack free of flames.

I slowly started running towards the gap as it let loose its flames and flapped its wings at me.

I ran past the gap in the wall of fireballs without any trouble as Lamia just went above.

The bird squawked before glancing back at the ruined section of its tail.

"Keep your eyes on me!" I demanded as I reached the bird and swung my daggers at its head which was still just in range. Its head swung back away from me just as my daggers would have cut its head off.

Right into the waiting hand of Lamia who sliced its head off with purple glowing nails.

Thank you blight fang. I took more damage casting you then I took from this stupid bird.

I watched the now headless body of the bird in front of me and noted the lack of blood. Inside of it there was just some sort of black void.

Weird.

Weirder still was the way that the body started to darken and shrivel up after a second. Cracks started appearing all over its body before parts of it broke off and crumbled to dust. Every time it did, they were carried off by the wind even though there wasn't even a breeze in here.

After a few more seconds, the only thing left of the bird was a quarter circle on the floor. I picked it up and held it up in front of the emblem on the floor.

It was an exact match.

"Alright, let's get out of here," I placed the emblem under my arm and headed off to the staircase.

I climbed down the tower grunting as the emblem weighed me down. I needed to get a backpack or something. Maybe next time.

There were a couple of windows on the side of the tower, letting me see how high up I was compared to the rest of the castle. As I went down, I noticed that we were getting closer to the top floor.

I reached the bottom of the stairs, with no way to keep going down. Based off the last sight of the outside I had gotten, I was still at the very top of the castle.

The room that I had come out of was pretty nice. The stone walls and wooden floor were still there, but now the floor had a red carpet and the wall was lined with swords and other decorations.

I glanced at my daggers before dismissing them and reaching out for one of the smaller curved swords on the wall.

My hands went right through it like it was made of smoke.

I groaned light disappointment before looking at the one door in the room that led forward.

I was still in pretty good shape, let's keep going. I went into the door and into a rectangular version of almost the same exact room that I had just been in. There was the same red carpet and the same repeating lines of weapons on the walls.

The only additions were two rows of tables and a large ruby cocoon hanging off the ceiling in the dead center of the room.

Maybe I should have led with that last part?

I carefully walked around the edge of the room towards the other door, making sure to stay as far away from the cocoon as possible. Of course since the room was a rectangle, I couldn't help but closer to that thing as I kept going.

I reached the mid-point of the wall and sighed as the cocoon started to crack. I stopped hugging the wall as the cocoon shattered, its red pieces turning into black sludge before falling to the floor and reshaping as an armored knight. Or at least a knight's armor. I was pretty sure that the helmet was empty inside.

The whole thing was made off gray shining metal except for an emblem on its chest. It was a shield made of red, white, green, and yellow sections.

"Not what I expected but okay," I told the knight as it created a sword and pointed it at me. It rattled as it charged right at me.

I dropped the emblem piece I was holding in my hands and summoned lamia. We both grabbed onto the edge of the table in front of us and flipped it up with all the strength.

Which honestly wasn't that high an amount, but the armor still got surprised by the sudden presence of table in his face.

"Light this thing up," I commanded as Lamia let loose an Agi towards the armor.

The armor tossed the table to the side just as the flames hit it. The blast sent it reeling back before making it fall to its knee.

I recognized a downed foe when I saw it and ran forward. I brought Lamia's fangs down on the armor's exposed back… and almost bounced off. My daggers weren't going to do anything against this… metal armor with nothing inside.

Okay so maybe that should have been obvious.

The armor stumbled to its feet before glaring at me with its empty helm. It raised its sword and made a wild horizontal swing.

I ducked down, feeling the wind blow over my head. Without a word, I summoned Lamia again to fire another Agi.

The flames did their job, sending the armor back to the ground.

This time I wasted no time in keeping lamia out and sending a couple more Agis its way.

By the time I was done, the armor had been reduced to a charred scrap and the yellow circle was half full.

I propped myself up and sat on one of the tables. I let out an exhausted sigh as I watched the armor turn to dust and fade away like the bird did. I guess that's just what happened to stuff in here?

Would that happen to me if my green circle emptied out? I let loose a shiver as the scene played in my head.

Best not to think about it, let alone risk it.

Speaking of risking it… did I keep going? It was a little dangerous… but I was still pretty sure that I could handle at least one more fight. If I did get over my head, I could always just run for it out of the castle anyway.

I glanced at the spot where the armor had fallen and did a double-take when I spotted something on the floor. I hopped off the table and knelt down over the stuff.

"Is this… cash?" I mumbled as looked at the small collection of bills and coins on the ground next to a small scrap of metal. I shuffled it around a bit to figure how much there was.

It wasn't much, only three dollars and sixty-seven cents… but it was more than I had been expecting to get from beating the armor. I'd been expecting something in-between diddly and squat.

Was this even real money? Would I get arrested for counterfeiting if I used it? I glanced down at the money again and picked it all up, including the iron scrap just in case, and placed it in my pocket.

I mean, I guess it would come in handy? And more money was always good…

I'd figure out what to do with this stuff later. For now I picked up the emblem and kept going.


	15. Case 4 part 3

After the room with the animated armor, I went through three more rooms. The first of which had a treasure chest like the kind in the locker. When I opened it up I found an ugly looking jacket with heavy padding.

I took one look at it and placed it back in the chest and kept going.

After that there was another cocoon room. I set the emblem aside from the beginning this time and went to activate the cocoon. Instead of an animated armor, I instead got a pair of small child-like winged figures with bows.

Cupids basically, except they wore that same four colored emblem on their face like a mask. I would have felt bad about burning them and cutting them to pieces if they hadn't started shooting arrows at me first.

In other news I now had two small arrows sticking out of my shoulder. I tried not to think about how I was going to explain that to mom and dad. At least they had left behind small bits of cash and two strings that looked like they were made of silver.

After that one, I decided to back out if I saw any more cocoons. Fortunately for me, the next room was another chest room. I almost decided to skip it after what had been in the last one, but the curiosity got the better of me.

I threw the chest open to see a bottle of juice inside. It was one of those fruit blends that was supposed to be good for your health or something.

Despite the balmy temperature of the castle and the chest, it was cool to the touch like it had just come out of the fridge.

I looked the bottle over as realized that I was a little thirsty. Was I really about to drink a strange bottle that I found in a treasure chest?

I peered at the top of the bottle and found the seal intact.

"You know what… good enough," I justified it to myself as I broke the seal and chugged the drink down. Despite the situation I appreciated the cool drink going down my throat.

I let out a satisfied sigh as I felt something odd on my shoulder. I glanced down at myself and watched as the arrows pushed themselves out of my clothes. I made a quick check of my stats and say the green circle just a bit bigger than it had been after I had gotten shot.

I looked down at the now empty health potion in my hands and made a mental note to always drink these whenever I found them.

Item hoarding? What was that? Sounded like something you did if dying only meant going back to a checkpoint or menu.

I was about to keep going when I realized that I needed a place to throw the bottle away. Just because I was going through a strange castle and fighting the monster inside for money didn't mean that I was about to start littering.

I wasn't a monster after all.

In the end I decided to just leave the bottle where I found it inside the chest. Who knew, maybe doing so would refill it after a while. I was in a magic castle floating in the sky that I had accessed from a magic mirror in a train station. Magically refilling fruit drinks would not be the weirdest part of my day.

I kept going and went through the door which brought us to now.

I had finally reached a room that looked really different from the rest. Don't get me wrong, the room still had red carpet and walls of weapons lining the wall, but the layout was pretty different.

Instead of having one door leading out and one leading in, there were four doors in the room, each one on a different wall. Above every door was one fourth of the emblem that all the monsters in this castle wore. The red section was right above the door that I had just come out of.

In the very center was a grand staircase that led upwards. It looked pretty opulent, with railing that was made of polished wood and steps draped in a red carpet with white lining that looked much brighter and better kept then the carpet in the rest of the castle so far. If I had to guess, I would say that it probably led to that one room sticking up out of the roof.

I climbed up the stairs slowly, keeping my hand on the rail and keeping ready for any movement that might signal a trap.

Fortunately, no such trap came and I made it to the top of the stairs without a hitch. I let out a breath that I hadn't even noticed that I had been keeping in as I went through the wide double doors.

In the very center of the room was a raised platform surrounded by a wooden railing. In the center of it was a table with a hollowed out portion. On the walls were four stone statues of animals. There was a tiger, a Chinese dragon, a turtle and a familiar jerk of a bird.

"Well at least it's not a hard puzzle," I told myself as I walked up onto the platform and placed the red section of the emblem. After placing it in, it slid around a bit before slotting into place. I glanced over and saw that the red section was now pointing straight at the bird.

I glanced back down at the red emblem that I had just placed down. If the emblems on the monsters were accurate, then I was missing green, yellow and white pieces. The firebird gave me the red emblem so should I expect the other animal to each give me another plate?

The answer was obviously yes, but which animal held which. Last thing I needed was to run into the ice animal and get frozen solid. No I had to think this through.

Turtles live in water, but there wasn't a blue section so maybe it was ice? And I would have guessed that the dragon was fire but the bird already took that spot. Yellow was probably electricity which could have been either the tiger or the dragon… unless it was earth in which case it might be the turtle or tiger. And I had no clue what green could have been. Either nature or wind if I had to guess.

…This was getting too much for me. After these last few fights, I was already pretty tired. With any luck, the monsters wouldn't respawn or anything. I turned back around and headed down the stairs and through the castle again.

I followed my steps out and while the fruit drink/ health potion didn't come back, the monsters didn't either. I passed by the other chest and stopped for a second. The jacket inside, while hideous to the eye, a mish-mash of neon green stripes and beige patterns, had pretty tough padding.

In the end it was just too ugly to take with me. I made sure to remind myself to bring a backpack with me next time though. Just in case I found something that didn't want to make me want to carve my own eyes out.

I left the castle and went home with no trouble. I made sure of it too, making sure to keep my eyes out for any minor changes that might signify that I was in some sort of altered version of reality, but none showed up.

When I woke up the next morning, I checked my stats. I had never taken that much damage and used so much magic before, so I wondered if sleeping would have topped me off like in a game.

No dice, my health and magic were fuller than they had been before bed, but they weren't full.

If I had to guess, it would take me at least three days to get everything back. And all that to get one-fourth of a shield, which I probably needed as a key, to get past one floor of the castle. A castle that probably led up to the first crosswalk on the pillar.

It was going to take me years to get to the top of that pillar.

Ugh.

I made it to school the next Monday to find everyone a bit on edge. I wasn't sure what was up, but I figured that if it was a big deal then I'd hear the details by the end of the day.

I sat in my usual place and listened in on the conversations around me.

From the gathers whispers I could hear, it sounded like there had been some sort of incident on Saturday while I had been in the Alice room. Apparently someone had stolen from a charity that a lot of the people in school had fundraised for in the past. One of the guys running it had run off with all the cash that the kids had raised at the end of the last school year.

I had never really done any of the fundraisers back in elementary school, but I knew a lot of kids did. And the one that got robbed was the one for the community center in the center of town…

Wait a second.

Why did a city-run and city-funded community center in one of the richest parts of town need a bunch of eight-year-old to raise money for it?

It made sense back when I was a kid, but in hindsight, the whole thing felt sketchy. Did they really expect a bunch of children to fund a community center one chocolate bar at a time?

You know what, not my problem. I'd never even been to that community center in the first place.

I spent the rest of the day in relative peace as the anger around me slowly grew.

I saw some of the boys grinding their teeth and punching walls and lockers. Some of the girls spoke to each other in angry whispers that freaked me out a little.

I somehow made it to lunch without any trouble.

I was about to head over to my usual place to watch Zach paint when a vending machine caught my eye. Suddenly the money I got from destroying those monsters felt warm in my pocket.

I pulled out my wallet and looked at the bills in question. After getting home on Saturday, I had placed the scrap metal and silver wire in the chest and had then combed over the bills. As far as I could tell, they were totally normal in every way.

Well, this was it. I could either spend this money or choose not to. I pulled out a single dollar bill from my wallet, making sure that it was one of the ones that I got from the castle. I pushed it in, a small part of me hoping that the machine would just reject it outright.

Of course that didn't happen, instead the machine read that a dollar had been inserted and now all I had to was pick something from…

"All of these cost more than a dollar," I grumbled before fishing out a few coins that I needed to make up the difference. I wasn't even sure if they were the coins I had gotten from the castle.

I walked away trying not to think about it, instead focusing on opening the pack of fruit gummies in my hand.

All I had to do was place one hand here, one hand there and… Wait a second. If a fruit drink healed me up in the Alice room, what could these gummies do? The fruit drink was a totally normal drink that I had seen in stores all the time. The only weird thing about it had been where I found it.

Maybe it was the Alice room itself that changed the drink? In that case what else could the Alice room change?

Better to save them and bring them in with me when I went back into the Alice room in three days. If they did change they could come in handy in my attempt to…

What exactly was my ultimate goal for the Alice room? Clear it and hope it vanishes? Maybe I should rethink that. Maybe it would be better to just get rid of the room? The only way in was an object well known for being easy to shatter.

I could just break the mirror and be done with it.

With that idea put away for the day, I made it to the art room and saw Zach already hard at work.

"Your dad is going to get mad at you," I commented as I took my usual spot.

"Not really, I talked to Robby last Sunday and apparently, he wants this one," He paused to glare at the canvas a bit before nodding his head. "So my dad doesn't have to worry about his walls for this one,"

"I'm sure he's ecstatic," I joked before glancing at the painting and a certain through crossed my mind. "Hey can I ask you something without you getting mad because I know some creative people have issues with it?"

"Sure?" He raised his eyebrow at me and set down his brush.

"Why don't you ever try to sell your paintings?"

He didn't say anything at first, and for a second I was worried that I had set him off or something. Instead, he kind of just sat there in silence for a while before glancing back at the canvas.

"Oh my god," He gripped both sides of the canvas as his eyes darted from side to side. "I could just sell my paintings. Why have I ever thought of this before?"

"You've never even thought about selling your paintings before?" I repeated as he let go of the painting and set his brush down. He almost jumped out of the chair and rushed over to me and placed me in a tight hug.

"Thank," He said in a stunned whisper. "Thank you so much. I'm going to have space for so many more paintings,"

I was about to ask him to let me go when he suddenly pushed me out to arm's length. He looked at me with slightly crazed eyes, his smile witching on his face.

"If you'll excuse me, I need to go call my dad and ask him why he never thought about this before,"

He ran out of the room without saying a word, leaving me in the dust.

"Just what have I unleashed?"

Well, best not to worry about it too much.

I finished off the rest of the day and headed home to find a package waiting for me. Looked like I was no longer between books.

"Maybe I shouldn't wait until finishing my current book to order the next one online," I figured to myself as I opened up the package. Inside was a copy of Rising Zephyr, a fantasy novel about a guy who finds an ancient airship and decides to use it to resist the oppressive empire that's taken over his homeland.

I set the book aside and got ready to do my homework, wanting to get the day over with.

Tomorrow I would be good to head back into the Alice room.


End file.
